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, until 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 forward. 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 we 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 acknowledge 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. 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 still make music with all that we have left.
--Source Unknown
note from Ed Egnuss (a long-term friend of Bill Lurie's from White Plains, New York.)
This is a true story---I was at the concert when this happened.
He was just fantastic. He really tore the house down.
The following story adds to Mr. Perlman's luster.
FIDDLING FOR A HARLEM SCHOOL by Ben Sisario, New York Times, December 2, 2003.
If it sounds like a movie, that's because it was one:
a decade ago a music teacher in East Harlem whose program was canceled in a round of budget cuts
held a benefit concert to raise the money she needed to keep the program going.
Phone calls were made and soon enough Itzhak Perlman, Isaac Stern and other stars were onstage at Carnegie Hall,
playing alongside the students, which made the teacher, Roberta Guaspari, very happy,
and earned her program, Opus 118 Harlem Center for Strings, more than $300,000.
(It also attracted Hollywood: Meryl Streep played Ms. Guaspari in the 1999 film "Music of the Heart.")
The current city budget being what it is, tonight in Carnegie Hall Ms. Guaspari is having her sixth benefit,
and one look at the list of performers is enough to explain why it is called "Fiddlefest":
the lineup includes Joshua Bell, below left, Regina Carter, Mr. Perlman, Arnold Steinhardt,
Pinchas Zukerman and Natalie MacMaster,
along with the nonfiddlers Bobby McFerrin, Yo-Yo Ma, Mark O'Connor and Dave Grusin.
Opus 118 operates music programs in public schools,
trains music teachers and has a community program that offers afterschool lessons.
