Itzhak Perlman: The Truth Behind an Amazing Violinist

On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on 
stage to give a concert 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 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 a 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... or wait for someone to bring him another."

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; you know that. But 
that night Itzhak Perlman refused to know 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 his 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 an artist but for all of us. Here is a 
man who has prepared all his life to make music on a violin 
with four strings, who all of a sudden, in the middle of a
concert, finds himself with only 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.