Klarinet Archive - Posting 000045.txt from 2001/04

From: Neil Leupold <leupold_1@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] The strings we have left
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 23:29:31 -0400

It's almost enough to bring tears to your eyes. Perhaps some
of you have seen this article before. It speaks on the plain
and the sublime of levels. I thought many of you would appreci-
ate this.

~ Neil

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to give a
concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City. If you
have ever been to a Perlman concert, you know that getting on stage is no
small achievement for him. He was stricken with polio as a child, and so
he has braces on both legs and walks with the aid of two crutches.

To see him walk across the stage one step at a time, painfully and slowly,
is an unforgettable sight. He walks painfully yet, majestically, he reaches
his chair. Then he sits down, slowly, puts his crutches on the floor, undoes
the clasps on his legs, tucks one foot back and extends the other foot for-
ward. Then he bends down and picks up the violin, puts it under his chin,
nods to the conductor and proceeds to play.

By now, the audience is used to this ritual. They sit quietly while he
makes his way across the stage to his chair. They remain reverently silent
while he undoes the clasps on his legs. They wait until he is ready to play.
But this time, something went wrong. Just as he finished the first few
bars, one of the strings on his violin broke. You could hear it snap - it
went off like gunfire across the room. There was no mistaking what that
sound meant. There was no mistaking what he had to do. People who were there
that night thought to themselves: "We figured that he would have to get up,
put on the clasps again, pick up the crutches and limp his way off stage -
to either find another violin or else find another string for this one."

But he didn't. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then
signaled the conductor to begin again. The orchestra began, and he played
from where he had left off. And he played with such passion and such power
and such purity as they had never heard before. Of course, anyone knows
that it is impossible to play a symphonic work with just three strings. I
know that, and you know that, but that night Itzhak Perlman refused to know
that. You could see him modulating, changing, recomposing the piece in his
head. At one point, it sounded like he was de-tuning the strings to get new
sounds from them that they had never made before.

When he finished, there was an awesome silence in the room. And then
people rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of applause
from every corner of the auditorium. We were all on our feet, screaming
and cheering, doing everything we could to show how much we appreciated what
he had done. He smiled, wiped the sweat from this brow, raised his bow to
quiet us, and then he said, not boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive, reverent
tone, "You know, sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music
you can still make with what you have left." What a powerful line that is. It
has stayed in my mind ever since I heard it. And who knows? Perhaps that is the
way of life - not just for artists but for all of us. Here is a man who has
prepared all his life to make music on a violin of four strings, who, all of a
sudden, in the middle of a concert, finds himself with only three strings. So
he makes music with 3 strings, and the music he made that night with just
three strings was more beautiful, more sacred, more memorable, than any
that he had ever made before, when he had four strings. So, perhaps our
task in this shaky, fast-changing, bewildering world in which we live
is to make music, at first with all that we have, and then, when that
is no longer possible, to make music with what we have left.

- Jack Riemer, Houston Chronicle

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