Making Music with Three Strings

yifei

三弦琴音(Making Music with Three Strings)

If you have ever been to a concert by the violinist Itzhak Perlman, 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. 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 his violin, puts it under his chin, nods to the conductor and proceeds to play.

One day Perlman went on stage to give a concert. The audience sat quietly while he made his way across the stage to his chair. They waited until he was 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.

People who were there that night thought to themselves: \"He will either find another violin or else replace the string on this one.\"

But he didn't. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes then signaled the conductor to begin again. The orchestra began, and he played from where he had left off. He played with overwhelming passion and power and purity.

Of course, 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 and 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. He smiled, wiped the sweat from this brow, and then he said, \"You know, sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.\"