Whenever money matters weigh you down, it might help to remember that financial constraints sometimes produce unexpected treasures. Consider Chopin. Because of his chronic pulmonary disease and lack of stamina, Chopin didn’t have the lucrative concert career that his friend Franz Liszt enjoyed. Even though the musical world of the 1830′s and 40′s acknowledged Chopin’s genius, and even though his every new composition was eagerly awaited and successfully published, their sale did not support his elegant lifestyle. But being a sought-after teacher of the talented aristocracy did.

Chopin came from a pedagogical lineage — his own father was a French teacher in Warsaw. When he wasn’t composing, Chopin devoted much of his time, especially during the winter months, to teaching private piano lessons. He was a teacher of great influence, although many of his pupils were women of the nobility and thus never allowed to appear on the concert stage; only about 20 of his students went on to have professional careers. He saw teaching as a calling, which his student Mikuli described in this way: “Chopin daily devoted his entire energies to teaching for several hours and with genuine delight…Was not the severity, not so easy to satisfy, the feverish vehemence with which he sought to raise his pupils to his own standpoint, the ceaseless repetition of a passage till it was understood, a guarantee that he had the progress of the pupil at heart? A holy artistic zeal burnt in him the, every word from his lips was stimulating and inspiring.”

And this, from his pupil Maria von Harder (no relation): “Chopin was a born teacher, expression and conception, position of the hand, touch, pedalling, nothing escaped the sharpness of his hearing and his vision; he gave every detail the keenest attention. Entirely absorbed in his task, during the lesson he would be solely a teacher, and nothing but a teacher.”

How fortunate for us Chopin devotees that Chopin had so many devoted disciples. As a true artist, he never got around to committing his teaching method to paper in some dry and dusty text (despite all good intentions, he preferred to compose the Fantasie-Impromptu instead.) It is mainly through his pupils’ and contemporaries’ letters, remembrances, writings, diaries and even the scores annotated by Chopin himself, that we know important facts about the way he played his own compositions and how he preferred them to be played.

An absolutely indispensable reference for Chopin interpretation can be found in a single book, which I’ve used as a pianistic Bible for many years. This is Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger’s Chopin: pianist and teacher as seen by his pupils, published by Cambridge University Press. In one streamlined volume, Eigeldinger painstakingly compiles these primary sources and presents them in a clear and readable form. He shows, through the pupils’ words and their annotated scores of specific compositions, how Chopin approached fingering (of paramount importance to him,) pedalling, phrasing, other aspects of technique, timing, and overall musical style. Originally published in 1970 in French, no other book has come along to supplant Eigeldinger’s work, and probably never will. This volume is one that should never go out of print.

Had Chopin not been sickly, had he made a fortune giving concerts like Liszt or any of his other virtuoso contemporaries, he likely would not have taught so much during his short life. His students would not have passed on his pedagogical pearls of wisdom to future generations. But he did teach, and we are enriched immeasurably by these pearls. That, to me, is a silver-lining playbook of the most priceless kind.

 

 

Despite distant warnings about a hurricane coming our way, Tom and I went ahead with our plans to celebrate our 27th — yes, 27th! — wedding anniversary in New York City. One of the highlights of our trip was taking in a new production put on by the Metropolitan Opera, The Tempest, composed and conducted by Brit Thomas Adès.

What we experienced was a visual treat, with sets, special effects, and costumes that borrow cleverly from pop culture. To depict the tempest at sea, a large gold chandelier descends from the ceiling, inexorably spinning. Hanging upside-down, Ariel, clad in a skin-tight sparkly leotard, twines around the chandelier like an acrobat from Cirque du Soleil. Harry Potter-like effects appear in the form of moving portraits (depicting Prospero’s traitorous brother and henchmen) and video images effectively show the wilderness that the shipwrecked passengers must wander through. The costumes, designed by Kym Barrett, are some of the most luscious I have ever seen, and flatter even the heftiest sopranos and tenors of the chorus.

Thomas Adès score, however, borrows not one eighth note from pop culture. It is angular and dissonant, with propulsive, square rhythms and no particularly hummable melody. Still, the orchestration and vocal balance he achieves is always effective. Some of the singing, in particular colaratura Audrey Luna’s Ariel and mezzo Isabel Leonard’s Miranda, is astounding.

What drives the work forward to its satisfying conclusion is Adès and librettist Meredith Oakes’ understanding of Shakespeare’s final play. They elucidate the Bard’s themes portrayed in his complex protagonist Prospero: the oppressed becoming the oppressor, the destructive nature of revenge, the power of love to transform and unite, the ultimate power of forgiveness. Modern production values and videography aside, relying on good old Shakesperare to provide the framework for a new work that will last — it’s a smart bet.

The next day, we decided to forego our reservation at Becco, one of our favorite restaurants. This real-life tempest was really going to happen, it seemed. Three hours later, the city closed its trains and subways. Eight hours later, Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on New York and New Jersey, and us too, and unlike Shakespeare, we could conjure up no Ariel to clean up the mess.

But today, finally, the sun is shining. The storm of election battles is over. I wouldn’t mind singing about that.

 

Over the years, friends have asked me to play for their weddings, birthday celebrations, at Christmas parties and New Year’s. A few weeks ago, one of my dearest friends made a request that I didn’t want to hear.

“Would you play at my funeral?” she asked. “Because there will be a funeral.” Her tone was matter-of-fact, yet cheerful, as if she found the prospect of dying mildly absurd. She added, sounding almost bemused, “My daughter insists there be a service, to honor her mother.”

Up until that point, we had all been denying that a funeral was anywhere in the works. But eventually Stage 4 breast cancer wears one down. Even though I wasn’t ready to accept her acceptance of the inevitable, I said, “Of course I’ll play, you don’t even need to ask.”

“Oh, thank you,” she said, obviously relieved. ”Because if you don’t, there’s just bound to be hymns and a Presbyterian choir group.”

Much as I wanted to disbelieve she was giving up the fight, I know now that with that request she was preparing me. Ginny passed away two weeks ago, on a glorious September morning, at home, with her children by her side.

Yes, she was a soprano in the church choir, and sang all the hymns, but she’d grown up in the Twin Cities, in the 40’s, listening to her accomplished amateur pianist mother practice for hours. Ginny was a painter and a poet. Hymns alone wouldn’t do.

In choosing what to play for her service tomorrow, I’ve decided on late Beethoven (the Opus 109 Sonata – which is a miracle of profundity and grace.) Two Etudes –the Aeolian Harp by Chopin and “Un sospiro” by Liszt, which Ginny would have likely heard her mother play. The brilliant, melodious runs that soar and cascade through both pieces make me think of what Ginny said was her great joy as a child, which was to strap on ice skates and fly across the frozen Minnesota lakes ”like the wind.”

Finally, before the organist begins his Prelude, I will play Debussy’s “Clair de lune.” It is not funereal. It is a romantic, wistful piece, which evokes all the colors and lyricism that Ginny loved to create in her own art. It is tender, too, like her unconditional love for so many people.

My father told me that his father was the lead funeral singer in their village, when the area around Seoul, Korea, was still a rural, agragrian place, long before the Korean War, when whole villages came out to mourn the passing of a member of the community. Tomorrow I will be carrying on the tradition of my grandfather. To comfort the grieving and light the memory of a loved one – I can think of no greater honor that music serves.

I’ll have the tissues ready, though Ginny would want us to hug, sing and laugh.

 

 

 

I have mixed feelings about competitions. When asked to judge them, I usually decline. After all, a musical performance shouldn’t be an athletic event, with points to be won or lost, winner take all. Yo-Yo Ma, in Harvard Magazine, has declared, “Are you kidding? I lost every competition, except once when I was five. Today, I won’t even be a judge. I’m against them.”

That said, when the Tri-County Concert Association asked me to help judge their latest competition, I agreed, because I feel that Tri-County, through their long-standing concert series, does try to help serious young artists in a meaningful way. I asked to judge the “junior” or middle-school division as the timing of that category fit into my schedule, even though I assumed the repertoire would be less interesting than that played by the senior division the week before.

I arrived on a Saturday morning in April at the charming venue of Eastern University. The competition was held in the office of the chairman of the music department, in a stone mansion with windows that overlook ancient trees and manicured lawns. One by one the thirty or so contestants, all in grades 6 through 8, entered right on time (the competition is extremely well-organized,) sat at the old piano in the corner and performed their selected seven-minute piece from memory.

There indeed was an early Haydn sonata, and a few pieces which one would think of as “intermediate” repertoire, but most of what I heard could have easily belonged on a serious recital program in a professional concert hall: several Chopin Scherzi, Liszt Etudes, a middle Beethoven Sonata. At the end of a long day of judging, my co-judge Ken Borrmann and I agreed that four of the young pianists deserved honors, and that the top two were nearly tied. The two winners we chose performed Prokofiev’s Third Sonata and Liszt’s Tarantella from Venezia e Napoli, respectively.

Both winners demonstrated extremely clean playing of brilliant, highly demanding technical passages, tonal control through chord balance and dynamics, excellent sense of tempo and pacing, and overall conviction of performance – in short, these young musicians played with authority.

That is not to say that the two honorable mentions and a number of the other contestants did not also play beautifully and with conviction. Some of them may have even demonstrated a greater musical understanding or depth of expression than the chosen winners. It’s just that at that particular time, with a single piece on the line, the winners sounded most polished, and made the strongest statement.

I hope that just because they did not win first or second prize, none of the other pianists felt they were lesser musicians or were discouraged in any way. I hope that our positive critiques on their judging sheets were enough to dispel any feeling of disappointment at not winning.

Competitions are limited in their ability to rank talent, and are certainly limited in predicting the longevity of musical careers. As long as they are put in perspective by students (and by their parents!) they can be useful tools for polishing and performing a piece in a high-pressure situation. They should be viewed as a learning opportunity, not a final judgment.

During one of our breaks, I was chatting with my co-judge, and learned that Ken, besides being a professor of music, is also an expert rose grower. He told me to what great lengths he must go to produce champion specimens, and how carefully he must transport a prized blossom to a rosarian event. He has won top honors in regional rose shows, and at the national level as well, and has even gotten his young sons involved in helping him grow and present these horticultural winners.

As he told me with a quiet smile, “I’m competitive.”

 

This holiday season I had the good fortune of peeking behind the scenes of the Metropolitan Opera as the guest of Pete Dorwart — scientist, master woodworker, amateur cellist, professional music editor/publisher, and good friend of the Met.

Here’s the story: About ten years ago, the chief librarian at the Metropolitan Opera heard through his contacts at the Philadelphia Orchestra that Pete, using up-to-date music notation software, had created a new edition of Franz Lehar’s operetta The Merry Widow, which the Met was about to put on. The old Kalmus edition in general use at the time was hard to read and full of errors. Pete offered the Met his corrected, visually appealing, intelligently edited score and parts of The Merry Widow at a reasonable price, and a lifelong friendship was born.

“Many people would see that kind of opportunity and only hear ‘cha-ching’ but not Pete,” Bob Sutherland, the chief librarian, told me. “We’re grateful to him and his work.” Pete’s been invited to the Met library’s annual holiday party ever since.

Pete and I began our day at the opera by attending a final dress rehearsal of Hansel and Gretel, along with selected donors and several hundred lucky schoolchildren. Everything about the production, with its full set, costumes, and cast, appeared as it would on opening night, but with the addition of a large bank of cameras in front of the stage manned by press photographers, and several lighted tables scattered around the house for the assistant conductors and directors who were making their final notes for the production.

For me, the highlight of the 2-hour rehearsal was hearing the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in Humperdinck’s lush, Wagnerian score. They are simply one of the world’s warmest, best balanced, and virtuosically precise orchestras, and what a pleasure it was to hear them again.

After the curtain calls, Pete and I made our way to the party. The backstage area of the glamorous opera house is a warren of functional, low-ceilinged hallways, stairways, and cubbyholes, cluttered with electrical equipment, harp cases, and the diverse belongings of an enormous theatrical organization. Staff members wearing headsets hurried here and there. The opera house’s library occupies a lower, windowless floor, and is crowded with orderly shelves and bookcases. High up against a wall sit packages wrapped in brown kraft paper, with the titles of Verdi operas labeled in black marker.

“Those are the original Simrock editions of the operas when the Met premiered them back in the 1800’s,” Robert Willoughby Jones, one of the librarians told me. “We can never get rid of them.”

It made me feel better to know that the Met stores their historical scores in much the same way as I store our family photos.

Four full-time librarians provide the music to all the conductors, directors, orchestral instrumentalists, coaches, rehearsal pianists, soloists, and chorus members of the Met, as well as the subtitle and HD production departments -– a huge undertaking for a huge organization that puts on 28 fully staged operas a season. Even as we were about to enjoy librarian Rosemary Summer’s deliciously prepared appetizers and desserts, a singer rushed in needing a score to practice from.

Guests filtered in — reps from publishing houses and staff members of other libraries, from the New York Philharmonic, the Juilliard School, the New York Public Library.  I found them all to be a genteel, kindly, happy, and learned bunch.

Besides The Merry Widow, Pete has created and published new editions of nearly all the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan, Johann Strauss Jr’s Die Fledermaus, Victor Herbert’s operetta Naughty Marietta, and other works. He is currently working on Cyrano de Bergerac for the Victor Herbert foundation. After we left the party and were crossing Broadway to the Subway station, I asked Pete if he’d ever been to the Volksoper in Vienna, which is, after all, the epicenter of operetta.

“I’d like to go to Vienna,” he said, “But I’m six feet ten and a trans-Atlantic flight isn’t appealing to me.”

No matter. To make a positive contribution to an entity as remarkable as the Metropolitan Opera -– well, it doesn’t get any better than that.

 

For more information about Pete Dorwart’s publishing company, click on

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~dorwart/

 

 

One of the astonishing things about art is how you can discover it in the most unexpected places. This happened to me when I was 18-years-old, and my then-new-boyfriend Tom brought me to visit his home in Appalachia. There, one evening, I accompanied on the piano an excellent baritone who introduced me to the incredible songs of Franz Schubert.

This singer had been nicknamed “Crow” by his medical school classmates in Goettingen, Germany, because he sang “Die Kraehe” (“The Crow”) from Schubert’s great song cycle “Die Winterreise” so often. This singer had once auditioned for a European opera impresario, who declared that he could become a sensation, not only because of the quality of his voice, but because of his personality, which exudes the force and light of a solar system. Sig turned down the opportunity to develop a singing career because he believed his destiny was to “serve” (which, incidentally, was Beethoven’s philosophy about his own life.) To that end, my father-in-law spent over forty years working as a general internist in Appalachia, serving the rural population of Southeastern Ohio, where he and my mother-in-law live to this day.

Be that as it may, sometimes I cannot help but think how he would have benefited from the cultural riches we have here in Philadelphia. Last night I wished he could have heard the program Austrian mezzo-soprano Angelika Kirchslager and pianist Warren Jones gave for the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. Rather than offer up familiar, tuneful songs, they chose to perform complex, rarely heard lieder of Brahms, Wolf and Hahn, and selections from Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn.

How Sig would have enjoyed hearing Ms. Kirchschlager’s burnished, nuanced mezzo, and her penetrating interpretations. He would have been enchanted by her dramatic flair and the sometimes mischievous quality that make her appear a down-to-earth diva just inviting the family over to hear her sing.

My father-in-law would have admired, as I did, Mr. Jones’ gorgeous, virtuosic accompaniment that contained not one square edge.

Listening to this evening of lieder was especially poignant knowing that the following morning Sig, a doctor nearly all his adult life, would become a patient on an operating table in Columbus, Ohio, undergoing coronary bypass and replacement of an aortic valve that has been failing for some time.

Somehow the profundity of a great Lied, which deals with life or death as its subject matter, feels even more relevant when a procedure of this magnitude is facing someone you love.

Fortunately, all that singing has provided Sig with tremendous lung capacity, and as I write this, he has survived the operation and is recovering in the I.C.U. As soon as he makes it safely out of the hospital and into rehab, I will make sure he hears one of Angelika’s CD’s. I know he will appreciate it.

 

If a picture is worth a thousand words, let’s do away with words this time and instead let photos speak. These images were taken by Jonathan Yu, Haverford College class of 2012, whose artistic talents encompass both music and photography. Jon was at Marshall Auditorium on Haverford’s campus last February to capture my chamber music concert with my wonderful colleagues David Kim, violin; Sarah Adams, viola; and Efe Baltacigil, cello.

While you’re at it, click on the highlighted link below and let your ears be cajoled by the exquisite cello playing of Efe Baltacigil in the opening moments of Brahms’ Quartet in C minor, third movement.

11 Brahms 4tet Op 60-Andante trim

Early in med school, I put myself on a tight schedule so I wouldn’t have to give up playing the piano. I would attend my lectures on biochemistry and physiology until 5, eat a quick dinner with my roommates, run to a campus practice room, practice until 9, dash back to my apartment, and study until midnight. This might sound admirably self-disciplined, but I didn’t do it on my own. I had a mentor to guide me.

Her name was Tung Kwong-Kwong, and she taught piano at the Kent State University School of Music, along with her husband Ma Si-Hon, who was professor of violin. Even before I started studying with her, I knew — from the way she carried herself and from the brief compliment she gave me about one of my performances — there was nothing frivolous about Mrs. Ma. For teaching and performing, she always wore an elegant Westernized cheong-sam, a style one cannot pull off if one possesses an extra ounce of body fat. She always carried a Coach bag, because, she told me, one could send a Coach bag back to the store for refurbishing and repair.

She was exacting at lessons, and a little mysterious. Interspersed with exhortations on phrasing correctly, she told me about growing up in Shanghai, of bicycling through the streets with a gold bar in the basket to buy her first Steinway piano, of leaving China in 1947 before Mao’s takeover, of her father’s long imprisonment by the Communist party. Though she wasn’t a name-dropper, she knew a lot of fascinating people. She and Mr. Ma had been like godparents to Yo-Yo Ma (though no relation,) and they took me backstage to meet him when he performed with the nearby Canton (Ohio) Symphony.

“Debra’s in medical school,” Mrs. Ma said when she introduced me to him.

Yo-Yo told me that his own sister had finished med school and was rotating through Bellevue Hospital for her residency. Even though he was well on his way to world celebrity, I remember his respect toward the Mas; I got the feeling that with them, he felt he could be himself.

Mrs. Ma’s favorite topic ( besides Mr. Ma,) was her own teacher, the great Beethoven interpreter Artur Schnabel. When she was in her twenties, Schnabel accepted her into his class. Summer sessions were held in Italy, at Lake Como. While other students were out boating, sight-seeing or eating out, she would chain herself to a practice room, determined not to play “woodenly,” determined to make sense of Schnabel’s principles of melodic articulation.

“You’ll get it,” she told me, when I expressed frustration at my inability to phrase something in a compelling way. “You see, if you want it badly enough, you’ll be able to. I had to struggle too.”

She and Mr. Ma divided their time between Ohio and Manhattan, where they had a large teaching studio near Chinatown and a concert series called the Si-Yo Society, on which they performed chamber music with well-known musicians in New York. When they asked me to take part in the young artist division of Si-Yo, I was thrilled to work with other serious young musicians. Their nephew Yong-Zi, a sensitive cellist, and another nephew, exuberant violinist Wing Ho, who’d both survived the horrors of the Cultural Revolution, were core members of the ensemble, as was the powerfully expressive violist Sarah Adams. Under the scrutiny of Mr. and Mrs. Ma’s exacting ears, we rehearsed the Brahms F-minor Piano Quintet, as well as the Dvorak, Mozart and Faure Piano Quartets, over and over again. It was not an experience for the faint-hearted, but the resulting performances remain some of the most satisfying of my life.

Eventually I graduated from med school and moved away. Eventually, Mr. Ma retired from his professorship, and the Mas moved back permanently to New York. We stayed in touch by phone and I sent them a yearly Christmas card. I was puzzled when at some point I stopped hearing back from them, but I assumed they were just busy with their lives.

It was only when Sarah Adams phoned to tell me that Mr. Ma had passed away did I learn that both Mr. and Mrs. Ma had been ill for quite some time. Living alone and childless, their health worsened without their extended family realizing the extent of their decline. They were moved to an upscale retirement community close to their niece Zhen-Mei, and coincidentally, only twenty minutes away from where I now live with my family in suburban Philadelphia.

I phoned Zhen-Mei, whom I remembered from long ago as warm and generous. “She doesn’t remember much,” said Zhen Mei, who oversees Mrs. Ma’s care. “Her Alzheimer’s is pretty bad.”

When I saw Mrs. Ma at the memorial service for her husband, I was astonished by her chic looks, her shorter hairstyle, her figure trim as a teenage girl’s. Whether she could remember me, I didn’t know, though she smiled and spoke to me as if she did. Now that I knew that she lives nearby, I drove over to visit her a few weeks later.

“What took you so long?” she asked, and hugged me.

A black-and-white photo of Artur Schnabel hangs in a prominent place in the small apartment she now occupies at the Hill at Whitemarsh, where a nurses’ aide watches her 24 hours a day. Her concert Steinway grand takes up most of the living room, the front part of the fallboard protected by a length of plastic to prevent scratches on the ebony finish, just as it was covered in Kent. On the lid sit handsome photographs of Mr. and Mrs. Ma in their concertizing days.

Although she can’t remember the past week’s or morning’s events, or my name, she listens attentively when I sit down to to play for her. She takes a seat close to the keyboard as if she is about to teach. And she does teach. She sings the phrases of these famous masterworks by Chopin, Bach, Beethoven, as she would play them.

“Not so short on the second beat,” she tells me, “but more like this —“
or
“Vary the phrasing, for instance, like this —“

When it comes to music, her mind still doesn’t miss a beat.

I e-mailed Zhen-Mei a few weeks ago to let her know that I wanted to schedule another visit to Mrs. Ma, and learned that she had to be hospitalized because of a bad fall, from which she’d sustained a broken ankle and what might have been a subdural bleed. Her pacemaker had to be re-inserted, and she doesn’t want to eat. I remember Mrs. Ma telling me that Schnabel, at the end, refused to eat. She’s since made a small recovery, and I hope that under the right care, she will continue to improve.

In September I had the honor of performing for Mr. Ma’s memorial concert at Merkin Hall in New York, along with Yong-Zi, Wing (now a full professor of viola at China’s prestigious Central Conservatory Beijing, and a highly influential teacher,) and Sarah (now a sought-after freelance violist in New York and member of the Cassatt Quartet.) Joining us was the marvelous young concert violinist Chen Xi, who was raised in China and educated later at Curtis and is studying now at Yale. Yong-Zi chose the demanding program. Performing the late Beethoven trio and the Brahms C minor Quartet under the Si-Yo banner was a wonderful re-union and brought me the same happiness I’d experienced playing for Si-Yo so many years ago.

After the concert, there was a boisterous party in the reception hall upstairs, where Mrs. Ma, with a pink lily pinned to her chic black suit, was the honored guest. Friends, former piano students, and many family members surrounded her. I’d had no idea, from the vantage point of her milieu in Ohio, what an impact she’d had on so may people, and what a large family cherished her.

To bring music to so many, through teaching and playing, and to have the love one’s family -– that is a life worth living. Bravo, Mrs. Ma.

Read the late Alan Rich’s wonderful commentary on the Si-Yo Society and Mr. and Mrs. Ma.

As a kid, my husband Tom played shortstop and slugged home runs in the Little League. He never grew tall enough to become a professional baseball player, but he retained a great love of the game, and during our early married life in Columbus, Ohio, he always had the radio tuned to the “Cincinnati Reds Radio Network.” As the mother of two little girls who were into ballet and Laura Ingalls Wilder, I tuned out the play-by-play commentary, although the sausage jingle for Kahn’s “Big Red Smokies” still sticks in my head.

It wasn’t until we moved to Philadelphia that I started noticing baseball. It couldn’t be helped; I succumbed to the constant barrage –- jerseys, stickers, car antenna pennants, caps, shirts, and talk, talk, talk -– of Phillies this, Phillies that, especially during the ‘08 and ‘09 World Series, when Phillies fandom reached fever pitch. I tuned in, and fell in love with the grace of baseball when then-Philly pitcher Cliff Lee fielded a ground ball behind his back and shrugged as if to say, “hey, that was as easy to play as a C-major scale.”

I began to understand the suspense of baseball, began to see that watching a pitcher is like hearing a great concert pianist perform. The audience expectation is high and the anticipation palpable right before the wind-up/the first chord. The delivery is quick and immediately telling – one must be absolutely accurate in the strike zone/in playing the right notes. Predictability is fatal for both. A pitcher must vary his rhythm and the kinds of pitches he throws so the batter can’t get a hit off of him. A pianist must vary her phrasing and tempos, or her audience will fall asleep and not be moved. A pitcher collaborates with his catcher; a pianist with an orchestra or a singer or an instrumentalist. Both pitcher and solo pianist must possess the mental toughness of a general.

And when they blunder?

Three days ago, Cliff Lee, starting in Game One of the 2010 World Series, but this time in a Texas Rangers jersey, pitched a game that did not go his way at all. He gave up seven runs and was pulled out of the game after only four innings. Camera shots of him sitting in the dugout showed him stoically watching his team disintegrate. The “machine,” his catcher Benjie Molina reminded the press, was “just a human being, like all of us.”

And here the parallel continues. All performers are human, and some concerts will be duds. But when everything lines up, when practice, talent and hard work conjoin with inspiration, a good instrument, fine acoustics, and right timing, the thrill of that performance is like the thrill of an exciting post-season game –- unique in the moment and to be savored forever.

Until last month, I’ve been lucky enough to lead a normal life and play the piano injury-free. I don’t take any special precautions with my hands: I will wash heavy pots and pans, cut up raw chicken with sharp knives, and pull weeds. I vacuum with a heavy European model, and lug home outlandishly gigantic packages of paper products from B.J.’s Wholesale Club. Despite this cavalier attitude, I had never suffered from an arm or hand injury that kept me from playing –- until a recent bout with a wheelbarrow brought me low.

Blame it on my seasonal obsession with gardening. This past Pennsylvania winter was particularly brutal (think Washington crossing the Delaware for months on end.) So when the crocuses first poked their blossoms up through the soil in March, something inside me also sprang up –- the desire to plant. Off I traipsed to Amish country on several occasions with similarly obsessed friends, and stocked the back of my car with annuals, perennials, vegetables, seed packets, shrubs and even a couple of trees.

As any gardener knows, nature abhors a procrastinator. If you don’t get those babies in the ground and water them, they will die. Also, you have to prepare nice beds for them, so I dug up leaf compost from our back woods and, to supplement, ordered a dozen cubic yards of soil and mulch. The truck dumped the soil at the end of the driveway and I busily carted it by the wheelbarrow-full to numerous planting beds.

I guess it should not have been a surprise when I sat down to practice one day and felt an odd tingling sensation spread down my left arm and into my thumb, like a slow burn. The tingling came at random times, for instance, when I was walking, but more often when I played heavy repetitive left hand octaves at the keyboard.

I was scared. I envisioned a permanent injury, some tendinitis or carpal tunnel syndrome. I thought of the over-use hand paralysis that had ruined the concert careers of pianists like Leon Fleisher and Gary Graffman.

“Please send me to physical therapy,” I begged my doctor.

I am a firm believer in physical therapy –- it is scientific and safe. My therapist, Bob Campbell at Rasansky Physical Therapy in Bala Cynwyd, put me through a number of neck mobility tests and diagnosed a nerve root irritation at the C5-C6 vertebral space. I’d probably herniated a disc in my neck when lifting those over-filled wheelbarrows, and though that sounds dire, he told me, “It’s pretty common. Let’s see what we can do to help.”

For a month I underwent cervical traction, electrical stimulation of the trapezius, ultrasound. More important, I began a series of stretching and strengthening exercises of the shoulders and neck that I need to do for the rest of my life. I am happy to report that my arm and thumb are now nearly 100% tingle-free.

As for the pile of mulch, it still sits at the end of the driveway. I try not to look at it and feel obsessed. It’s a good exercise in letting go.