Back in 1999, Peabody celebrated Leon Fleisher's 40th
year on the faculty with a gala evening that culminated in
an audiovisual presentation on his extraordinary life,
narrated by Claire Bloom. Midway through the presentation
came the sound of Fleisher performing the Brahms D Minor
Concerto. It was an excerpt from the conclusion of the
third movement, and it filled the magnificent soaring
spaces of the George Peabody Library with a heart-wrenching
emotion. But then: "Suddenly the music stopped," Bloom
said. "Tragically, at the high-water mark of Leon
Fleisher's artistic life, his right hand developed a focal
dystonia. An incomparable pianist was forced to abandon his
two-handed career at the age of 37."
Fleisher's decades-long struggle to heal the injured
hand has been exhaustively documented. Happily, for the
past two decades this great artist has resumed his
two-handed career. A watershed was reached on Oct. 31,
2003, when Fleisher gave his first two-handed piano recital
at Carnegie Hall since 1947. Music critic Bernard Holland
wrote a laudatory review in The New York Times, commenting:
"It is hard to say whether 30-odd years of dormancy has
robbed us of music making at this level or whether a quiet
period of germination has resulted in the kind of quality
heard here."
Baltimore will soon witness another milestone in
Fleisher's artistic odyssey. As the highlight of his 75th
birthday celebration, on Thursday he will perform the
Brahms D Minor Concerto at the Meyerhoff, with Concert
Artists of Baltimore, conducted by artistic director Edward
Polochick. Fleisher has been performing the piece all over
the world in recent years, with the San Francisco Symphony
under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas, with the
Orchestre de Paris conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini, with
the Staatskapelle in Berlin with Daniel Barenboim on the
podium. May 13, however, marks the first time in nearly
half a century that he has been soloist for this concerto
in his hometown.
Although the venue for the concert is the Meyerhoff,
there will be a feeling that this is also a Peabody family
affair. Peabody's famed baritone John Shirley-Quirk will be
singing the Vaughan Williams Dona Nobis Pacem in Fleisher's
honor, and he will be joined by soprano Ah Yong, a Peabody
alumna. Concert Artists draws on many other Peabody artists
as members of its orchestra and chorus. Polochick is a
conductor on the Peabody faculty and an alumnus who studied
piano with Fleisher back in the 1970s.
"I was one of those fortunate few in the Fleisher
family of students," he says, "who, probably because of the
special alignment of the planets and other celestial
bodies, reaped the benefits of spending an enormous amount
of time with this music guru. We would enjoy a hamburger
and fries at the old Buttery while delving into the
philosophies of life which might — or might not
— ultimately connect you into how, in your next
lesson, to approach Beethoven op. 109."
On April 24, Fleisher was featured with the Peabody
Symphony Orchestra in the Grand Celebration Concert at
Peabody, marking the conclusion of its $26.8 million
construction project. He performed two left-handed piano
concertos, one specially written for him by Lukas Foss and
the Ravel. The May 13 concert will seem like a continuation
of the festivities.
It has often been said that there is something
mystical about the sound of Leon Fleisher, whether he is
playing with one hand or two. His recordings of Beethoven
and Brahms concertos with George Szell and the Cleveland
Orchestra in the 1950s are still regarded as definitive.
Many of his recordings have been nominated for Grammys. He
has premiered concertos written specially for him by
William Bolcom, Lukas Foss, Leon Kirchner, Gunther Schuller
and Curtis Smith, and solo works by Kirchner, Dina Koston,
George Pearle and Robert Saxton. In 2000, Fleisher was
featured on the Polygram Classics CD series Great Pianists
of the 20th Century, compiled by Philips to celebrate the
millennium. Honors and awards flow toward him in a steady
stream. In 2000, he was the only living pianist ever to be
inducted into the Classical Music Hall of Fame.
At Peabody, Leon Fleisher holds the Andrew W. Mellon
Chair in Piano, and is revered as an incomparable teacher.
For more than 40 years, the winding circular stairway that
leads to Studio 413, tucked away on the top floor of the
Peabody Conservatory, has been a Pilgrim's Way for
pianists.
Julian Martin, a former faculty member, who was a
student in Studio 413 during the '60s, says that Fleisher
would use the most way-out analogies to describe how a
particular passage should be played: "It might be like the
twitching of a horse's flank just before the tail swats a
fly, the roly-poly swimming style of a duckbilled platypus
or the stumbling gait of a construction worker overloaded
by a few too many beers."
Back in the '60s, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of
Piano used to arrive for his classes at Peabody on a motor
scooter, in sneakers and black leather jacket, complete
with ponytail. The ponytail is long gone, but Fleisher
still has that nonconformist aura about him. He is always
challenging his students.
Perhaps Julian Martin best captured Fleisher's sense
of mission in a 1999 article for Peabody News. "I like to
think of Fleisher as a benevolent engineer assembling a
fleet of heat-seeking missiles, priming and sending them
forth into the world," he wrote. "Regularly giving himself
over to the mysterious forces of sound and time, he is a
beacon, guiding us to seek and unleash the radiant energy
in music that warms us all."
Fleisher was born in San Francisco in 1928 into a
first-generation immigrant family. His father, Isidor, was
a Ukrainian from Odessa who made ladies' hats; his mother,
Bertha, came from Poland. Initially, it was his older
brother Raymond who got the music lessons, until his
parents discovered that everything Raymond could play,
Leon, at the age of 4, could play better ... without
lessons. From that point on, the focus was on practicing.
At age 8, he gave his first recital, at the Community
Playhouse in San Francisco.
By age 9, Fleisher needed a new teacher. Celebrated
conductor Pierre Monteux was determined he should study
with Artur Schnabel, but Schnabel refused to take pupils
under the age of 16. Undaunted, Bertha Fleisher smuggled
the 9-year-old into a dinner party, where Schnabel was
trapped into listening to him play. Schnabel broke his
rule, and in the summer of 1938 Fleisher went to Lake Como,
Italy, to study with the legendary teacher at his home.
Artur Schnabel had studied with Leschetizky, who had
studied with Liszt, who had studied with Czerny, who had
studied with Beethoven, so in studying with Schnabel, the
young Fleisher became the pupil of the pupil of the pupil
of the pupil of Beethoven. Schnabel, moreover, had known
Brahms, with whom he had gone on Sunday picnics in the
Vienna woods. So, through his teacher, Fleisher absorbed
the great romantic musical traditions of the 19th century.
"With one note or chord," Fleisher has said, "Schnabel
could suddenly put me in another universe."
With the coming of the Second World War, the bucolic
life in Italy came to an end. In 1939, Schnabel moved to
New York and took the now teenage Fleisher with him. During
his years there, the teenager met Gary Graffman and Eugene
Istomin, whose claim to fame at the time was that he had
been a batboy for the Brooklyn Dodgers. All three were to
become lifelong friends.
"It was Leon who allowed me to share his cramped
quarters in Paris," remembers Graffman. "Leon's generosity
to me continued over the years, even as a conductor. When
we did the Tchaikovsky B-flat Minor Concerto together here
in Baltimore, he did not speed up the orchestra before the
first movement octaves." That sense of supportive
collaboration was apparent in their student years. When
Graffman practiced, Istomin criticized and Fleisher played
the orchestra parts on the piano. He was so good at this
that his friends nicknamed him the "Fleisher
Philharmonic."
A few years later, in 1952, the "Fleisher
Philharmonic" emerged into the solo spot when, at age 24,
Fleisher became the first American to win the Queen
Elisabeth of Belgium Competition. The queen was an amateur
violinist, so she invited the Gold Medal winner to the
palace for tea and a little music making. She played a
Vivaldi concerto, and the "Fleisher Philharmonic" backed
her. It was the start of a beautiful friendship.
In the years since, Fleisher has played numerous
recitals in Belgium and has often served on the jury of the
Queen Elisabeth Competition. And he has seen some of his
own Peabody students compete and win medals. At the 1999
Peabody gala, Belgium's ambassador to the United States,
His Excellency Alex Reyn, conferred on him the title of
Chevalier of the Order of King Leopold II, Belgium's
equivalent to a knighthood.
Leon Fleisher had made his debut with the New York
Philharmonic under Pierre Monteux at age 16, but it was his
1952 win in the Queen Elisabeth that moved him into the top
rank of concert pianists. He appeared as soloist with
famous orchestras worldwide, under the baton of illustrious
conductors. Then, in the 1964-65 season, came the injury to
the right hand — a watermark in his life that he has
described as "lower than the Dead Sea." In an interview
with Newsweek, he confessed, "Music was the core of my
existence and it seemed gone, too. I alternated between
wandering in the valley of depression and being the Ogre of
the Andes."
Those painful years had a valuable outcome. He was the
first prominent musician to speak openly about his problem.
Until he came forward, musicians' physical problems had
been scrupulously hidden from the public. Currently,
Fleisher is a spokesperson for the Musicians with Dystonia,
a subgroup of the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation. As
the most famous musician to have suffered from this
condition, Fleisher will be speaking out about his
condition and the need for proper diagnosis. In addition,
he plans to produce his first CD in 40 years to include
newly recorded two-handed pieces; proceeds will be donated
to this cause. This year, the American Academy of Neurology
gave Fleisher its Humanitarian of the Year award.
Although, after 1965, Fleisher continued performing
the one-handed piano repertoire, he turned into new musical
paths, toward conducting, chamber music and teaching. With
former student Dina Koston, he co-founded and directed the
innovative Theater Chamber Players in Washington, D.C., for
four decades. From 1985 to 1997, he served as artistic
director at Tanglewood.
Looking back, Fleisher has said, "There is no doubt
that what seemed like the end of the world to me — an
unspeakable tragedy — turned out to be an opportunity
for growth, for expansion, for a widening of horizons that
is enough to make one believe in the justice of fate and
destiny."
However, Fleisher never gave up hope of performing
again with two hands, trying every kind of treatment
imaginable. When finally, in 1982, Fleisher walked on stage
to open Baltimore's new Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, his return
to two-handed playing made headlines all over the country.
It was a triumphant, but somewhat premature, return. It was
to take several more years before he regained full use of
the hand. His playing has an added poignancy from the sense
of time lost.
His 2004 schedule certainly has a sense of urgency to
make up for lost time. The coming months will find him
touring throughout the world, soloing with the New York
Philharmonic; conducting in Paris and at Tanglewood and
Aspen; performing on a Mediterranean cruise with the
English Chamber Orchestra; performing Beeth-oven's Emperor
with the National Symphony; giving the world premiere of a
long-lost left-handed concerto by Hindemith with the Berlin
Philharmonic; and playing at Carnegie Hall with Jaime
Laredo.
As this great artist approaches his 75th birthday, it
seems appropriate to recall what Gary Graffman, currently
president of Curtis, sagaciously observed at the 1999
Peabody gala: "Leon is an unusual fellow. Most people
change as they age. They develop pot bellies, their hair
falls out, and their personalities seem to reverse.
Youthful, bleeding-heart liberals become cantankerous
conservatives. Starry-eyed innocents have a way of becoming
crusty cynics. But Leon, I've decided, must have something
peculiar in his DNA. He goes on being the same Leon."
Which in itself is a cause for celebration.
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