Making Music

In 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to give a concert in New York City. Getting on stage is not easy 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. That night, he walked painfully as usual, yet majestically, until he reached his chair. Then he sat down, slowly, put his crutches on the floor, undid the clasps on his legs, tucked one foot back and extended the other foot forward. Then he bended down and picked up the violin, put it under his chin, nod to the conductor and proceeded to play.

However, something went wrong that night. Just as he finished the first few bars, one of the strings on his violin broke. People could hear it snap – it went off like gunfire across the room. There was no mistake about what that sound meant. The audience thought to themselves: “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, such power and such purity, and played the symphonic work with just three strings! The audience could see him modulating, changing, re-composing the piece in his mind. 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, people rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of the auditorium.

He smiled, wiped the sweat from this brow, raised his bow to quiet the audience, and then he said in a quiet, pensive and 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.”

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