Vinnie,
What a touching story! I had chills running up my spine just reading about
it!
Virgie and Hoshi
----- Original Message -----
From: "Vinny Samarco" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, August 06, 2006 11:00 AM
Subject: Fw: 4 Strings
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Bennett" <[log in to unmask]>
To: "'Everyone'" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, August 06, 2006 7:42 AM
Subject: 4 Strings
> Dear ones,
>
> May our lives be an example of what God can do with what time remains...
>
> Bless you,
>
> Bill
> ===================================================================
>
> Subject: 4 Strings
>
>
> 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 unforgettable 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." 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, and 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 this brow, raised his bow to quiet us, and
> then he said, not boastfullly, 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
> artists but for all of us. Here is a man who has prepared all his life to
> make music on a violin of four strings, who, all of a sudden, in the
> middle
> of a concert, finds himself with only three strings. So he makes music
> with
> 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.
>
> Jack Riemer,Houston Chronicle
>
> Just think what we can do with all 4 strings!
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
|
