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A Great Loss
Listen to Leon Fleisher
Recently the great pianist Leon Fleisher came to visit me in New York, a few days before he was to give a performance at Carnegie Hall. He told me how focal dystonia—the neurological condition that had led to paralysis of his right hand—had first hit him years ago. “I remember the piece that brought it on,” he began. He’d been practicing Schubert’s “Wanderer” Fantasy for eight or nine hours a day, he explained. Then he had to take an enforced rest—he endured a small accident to his right thumb and could not play for a few days. It was on his return to the keyboard that he noticed the fourth and fifth fingers of his right hand beginning to curl under.
His reaction, he said, was to work through it, as athletes are often told to work through the pain. But “pianists,” Fleisher said, “should not work through pain or any other symptoms. I warn other musicians about this. I warn them to treat themselves as athletes of the small muscles. They make extraordinary demands on the small muscles of their hands and fingers.”
Back in 1963, however, when the problem arose, Fleisher had no one to advise him and no idea what was happening to his hand. He simply forced himself to work harder. More and more effort was needed as other muscles were brought into play. Yet the more he exerted himself, the worse the condition became. Finally, after a year, the talented pianist gave up the struggle. “When the gods go after you,” Fleisher said, “they really know where to strike.”
Feeling that his career was over, Fleisher experienced a period of deep depression and despair. But he had always loved teaching, and now he turned to conducting as well. Then, in the 1970s, he made a discovery. Paul Wittgenstein, the dazzlingly gifted (and immensely wealthy) Viennese pianist who’d lost his right arm during World War I, had commissioned piano solos and concertos for the left hand from some of the world’s greatest composers. When Fleisher found this treasure trove of music, he was able to resume his career as a performing artist—but now, like Wittgenstein (and others), as a one-handed pianist.
Playing with only the left hand at first seemed to Fleisher a great loss. But gradually he came to feel that he had been “on automatic,” that he’d been following a brilliant but (in one sense) one-directional course. “You play your concerts, you play with orchestras, you make your records. That’s it, until you have a heart attack onstage and die,” he said. But now he began to believe that the physical loss of his right hand could be a growth experience.
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