This is a true story about Itzhak Perlman, one of the most accomplished and best loved concert violinists in the world.  Born in Tel Aviv, Israel in 1945, Itzhak contracted polio early in life but overcame his disability, taught himself the violin and went on to greatness in his field playing since 1958.  In 2016, at the pinnacle of his profession, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  But this story is about one night in Itzhak Perlman’s remarkable career and the lessons he so graciously and humbly imparted to an astonished audience.

On November 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, came on stage at Avery Fisher Hall in New York City for one of his classic performances.  I was there, the guest of two reporters from well-known New York Newspapers.  I am no aficionado of classical music and had never been to an Itzhak Perlman concert.  But I knew he had battled polio as a child and of course knew of his reputation as a violin master.   If you have ever been to a Perlman concert, you know that getting onstage is no easy task for him.  As I mentioned earlier, he was stricken with polio as a child and so he walks with the aid of crutches and braces.

He walked across the stage that evening slowly, painfully, and deliberately but with grace and dignity until he reached his chair.  He then sat down slowly, put his crutches on the floor, unclasped the braces on both his legs, put one leg in front of the other, reached down to pick up his violin, put the bow under his chin, looked up at the conductor, nodded and began to play.  The audience, I learned then, was quite used to this ritual.  They sat patiently, almost reverently waiting for the master to begin.  He commands that much respect.  And he has earned it.

But on this night, something happened.  As he was only a few bars into the first piece, one of the strings on his violin snapped.  You could hear it like gunfire across Avery Fisher Hall.  There was no mistaking the sound and there was no mistaking what obviously had to be done.  We thought he would have to put the braces back on his legs, pick up his crutches, walk across the room and get another violin or at least get a new string to repair the one that had broken from his violin.  Or perhaps someone would search for a replacement violin and rush it over to him.

But not Perlman.  Not on this night.  I watched closely as he raised his eyes to the ceiling, closed them momentarily as if offering a silent prayer, opened them, put the bow back under his chin and motioned for the conductor to resume.  The orchestra began playing and Perlman picked up from where he had left off.  He played with passion and with enthusiasm and with incredible intensity.  You could see him changing, modulating and de-modulating, innovating almost as if he were de-tuning the violin to get it to make sounds it had never made before.  It was masterful and incredibly emotional.

Now, everyone knows that it is impossible to play a symphonic piece with only three strings.  It just cannot be done.  But on that night, Itzhak Perlman forgot to know that.  He played beautifully and when he was done, there was an awesome silence over Avery Fisher Hall until, it seemed all at once, people stood up and began screaming, yelling applauding…doing anything to let him know how much we appreciated what he had done.  A magic moment.

He raised his bow to silence the audience and then spoke in a plain, unassuming, and humble tone words that are still with me today.  He said, “You know, sometimes it is the artist’s task to see how much music he can make with what he has, and when that is no longer possible, with all that he has left.”

What a powerful line!  What a powerful message!

Here was a man who had trained all his life to make music on a violin of four strings; then finds himself in the middle of a symphonic piece with only three strings.  And he stops, regroups, and makes music so beautiful and so memorable, perhaps as good, if not better than when he had four strings!

So perhaps the lesson, the example, is also for us.  In this crazy, insensitive, fast-paced, ever- changing bewildering world in which we live, perhaps, like the artist, each of us needs to make music, at first, with all that we have and then, when that is no longer possible, with all that we have left! 

We are faced with incredible challenges in this world, Covid, Wars, Disease… but no more so than those faced every day of his life by Itzhak Perlman.  How one responds to challenges and adversity is, it seems to me, essential to overcoming them.  Perlman could have quit.  He could have made excuses.  But he did not.  He adapted.  He improvised.  And with his incredible skill he performed at the highest level. 

As I said, a magical evening.