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DYSTONIA: Maestro Gets A Second Act Pianist Fleisher touts treatments for disease that shackled his right hand The Alameda Times-Star, CA By Melissa Schorr, STAFF WRITER Article Last Updated: Tuesday, May 04, 2004 - 9:51:42 AM PST FORTY years ago, pianist Leon Fleisher was a superstar in the classical music world. But while preparing to go on tour with the renowned Cleveland Orchestra, he noticed a strange sensation in his ring and pinky fingers. Within 10 months, he had lost complete control of his right hand -- and potentially, his professional career. At the time, his symptoms mystified doctors. Fleisher reluctantly abandoned his recording and performance career, resorting to teaching, conducting and, eventually, playing left-hand only concertos. But today, he has made an almost impossible comeback, thanks to newly developed treatments for his disabling disease, a common neurological disorder known as dystonia. At the American Academy of Neurology's annual meeting last week in San Francisco, he was honored for bringing heightened awareness to the disorder. "My life has been something of a soap opera, I guess," he joked to the hundreds of assembled neurologists. After accepting the Public Leadership award, he strode to a concert-sized black Steinway piano hauled down to the Marriott ballroom for the occasion, and sat, pausing a few moments for effect. Then, he effortlessly launched into Bach's melodic composition "Sheep May Safely Graze," fingers dancing over the keys, and followed up with an encore of several Brahams' waltzes from Opus 39. Only an expert would notice any lingering evidence of dystonia -- his right pinkie, still curved like a grande dame sipping high tea with the queen. "He's the Seabiscuit of pianists," declared his agent, Lisa Altman of Smash Arts in New York. "It's an amazing story of perseverance." San Francisco prodigy Fleisher, 75, was born in 1928 at Mount Zion Hospital and raised in San Francisco through age 9. At age 4, he began taking piano lessons. "I don't remember the time I wasn't playing," he says. "I'm the result of a very serendipitous coincidence: My mother's hopes and desires coincided with the talents I had as a youngster." At age 16, he debuted at Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic in 1944. From there, his career took off. In 1964, at age 35, just as he was about to go on a tour of Russia with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra, he was stricken with the earliest signs of his disorder. "I began to notice my fingers began curling under," he said. "Within 10 months, they refused to obey my commands." He sought help from specialists, but they had not yet even named the problem, let alone know how to deal with it. "As they say in Greek mythology, when the gods go after you, they know where to strike," he said wryly. He was misdiagnosed with repetitive stress injury. It would be decades until doctors determined that Fleisher had developed focal task-specific dystonia, a neurological disorder causing involuntary muscle contractions that often affects those who perform repetitive movements over long periods of time, such as musicians, typists and surgeons. "It was a pretty despairing time for me. I didn't want any one to know," he said." He sunk into a two-year depression that affected both his career and marriage. Eventually, Fleisher says, he realized he was deeply connected to the music, "which was not limited to playing the piano," and threw his energy into teaching and conducting. He also nurtured an ability to perform using only his left hand, performing pieces such as Ravel's left-handed concerto. Throughout this time, he continued seeking diagnosis and treatment. "I had tried eastern medicine, western, southern, northern, everything under the sun," he recalls. "I was given L-dopa (Levodopa, used to treat Parkinson's disease), pot. It didn't help." In the early 1990s, Fleisher learned of a clinical trial testing botulism toxin, or Botox, for focal dystonia offered at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. He was skeptical, but within days he found spasms of his right hand receding. "Suddenly, my fingers were staying extended as I desired them to," he said. In 1995, for the first time in 30 years, he performed Mozart's Piano Concerto in A Major with the Cleveland Orchestra using both hands. In April 2000, he was the first living pianist inducted into the Classical Music Hall of Fame. Today, Fleisher's schedule is jam-packed: a performance in Baltimore, a week of teaching at Lake Como, performances in Toulouse, France, and back to the New York Philharmonic in three weeks, marking his 60th anniversary since his debut. He and his wife, Katherine Jacobson, a teacher at the Peabody Conservatory of Music at Johns Hopkins University and a former student, often play four-handed concerts together, and he plans to make his first recording with both hands since his recovery. Fleisher is also participating in a worldwide tour organized by the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation, called Freedom to Play, to raise awareness of the propensity of musicians to develop dystonia and its potential treatment. "My mission, and I do accept this, is to go out and speak to young musicians, of which 10,000 are suffering from a form of dystonia," he said. "I hope to warn young artists of the danger of mindless practicing, of 'pumping ivory,' and that there are ways of dealing with it that were not around 30 or 40 years ago." In a sense, science moved too slowly for Fleisher. At the suggestion of this sad reality, he sighs and removes his glasses. "I'm afraid this answer might sound Pollyannaish, but the condition has forced me into an awareness of my true connection to music," he says. "Had I continued with success as a two-handed pianist, I would not have become the teacher or the conductor I have become. The act of sharing one's vision has produced moments of ecstasy. I'm not sure if I were in a position to change my life that I would." You can e-mail Melissa Schorr at [log in to unmask] or call her at (925) 416-4814 Reference: Dystonia Medical Research Foundation (DMRF) http://www.dystonia-foundation.org/ Musicians with Dystonia Bulletin Board http://www.dystonia-bb.org/forums/mwd/ Musicians with Dystonia Bulletin Board Important Announcement - Freedom to Play http://www.dystonia-bb.org/forums/mwd/posts/95.html Maestro Leon Fleisher is joining the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation (DMRF) this month to launch Freedom to Play http://www.dystonia-foundation.org/news.asp?id=139 Freedom to Play Launch Makes National News http://www.dystonia-foundation.org/news.asp?id=143 AAN 2004 Public Leadership Award goes to Leon Fleisher, musician who overcame dystonia http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-04/aaon-a2p042104.php Celebrate Dystonia Awareness Week: June 5-12 http://www.dystonia-foundation.org/news.asp?id=152 SOURCE: The Alameda Times-Star, CA Article Last Updated: Tuesday, May 04, 2004 - 9:51:42 AM PST http://www.timesstar.com/Stories/0,1413,125~1549~2126684,00.html * * * ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn