July 27, 2004
Music
A story is told of the violinist Itzhak Perlman playing a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City. Just as he finished the first few measures of the work, one of the strings on his violin broke.
When it snapped, the sound was like gunfire across the room. There was no mistaking what happened. There was no mistaking that Perlman surely must replace either the string or the violin.
Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes, and signaled the conductor to begin again. Then he played with a passion and a power and a purity as never 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.
When he finished, an awesome silence filled the room. Then people rose and cheered with an extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of the auditorium. Everyone was on their feet, screaming and cheering to show how much they appreciated what he had done.
He smiled, wiped his brow, raised his bow to quiet his audience, and then said in a soft, pensive, reverent voice, “You know, sometimes it is simply the artist’s task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.”