Very nice story Rayilynlee, amazing that he could improvise with just 3
strings

This is an inspiration but to be honest, i'd rather make the best out of
life with full faculties :-) ........ and please no angry replies back re my
comments if i brought the readers down from the recently inspired state,
it's nice to be "inspired" but then again one has to be a realist.

----- Original Message -----
From: "rayilynlee" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, June 16, 2007 8:26 PM
Subject: Making music with what you've got left


> PERLMAN - playing on 3 strings
>
> 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 awesome
> 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. 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, re-composing the piece in his
> head.
> At one point, it sounded like he was de-tuning the strings to get new
> sounds
> from the m 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 definition 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
> three 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.
>
> Rayilyn Brown
> Board Member AZNPF
> Arizona Chapter National Parkinson's Foundation
> [log in to unmask]
>
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