The Three String Violin/How is yours being played?

[Guest guest]

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. 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

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 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. "

Perhaps that is the definition of life - not just for artists but for all of us.

Perhaps our task in this fast-changing, bewildering world 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.

~ " If I could reach up and hold a star for every time you've made me smile, the

entire evening sky would be in the palm of my hand. " ~