Leon Fleisher: A Tale of Triumph

"My Nine Lives: A Memoir of Many Careers in Music"

By Leon Fleisher and Anne Midgette

Doubleday, 325 pages, illustrated

A TALE OF TRIUMPH
by Eliane Lust

In 1944, teenage pianist Leon Fleisher was described by Pierre Monteux, the great French conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, as the “piano find of the century”.  Later, in the 50s, Fleisher gained renown as an American pianist who won Belgium’s prestigious Queen Elizabeth Piano Competition at a time when American pianism was not yet even a real phenomenon on the international classical music scene. And to this day, Fleisher’s recordings of Brahms and Beethoven from those early years are still considered touchstone.

Now, at 82, Fleisher has co-written his memoirs with music critic Anne Midgette of the  Washington Post in a book tellingly titled “My Nine Lives: A Memoir of Many Careers in Music”. His delightfully informative autobiography tells what it was like to be a child prodigy, what it was like to perform with the world’s best orchestras and conductors, what it was like to be struck down by a sudden and debilitating hand injury, what it was like to perform only single-handed repertoire, what it was like to become a conductor and master teacher; and finally, what it was like to return to two-handed playing after an almost 30-year hiatus.

A page-turner

Likable, entertaining and essentially upbeat despite the enormous struggle that his right hand disability caused Fleisher, this memoir is a page-turner. Early on, he describes his decade–long lessons commencing at the tender age of 9 with the legendary Artur Schnabel, whose own teacher was Theodor Leschetizky, who himself had studied with Carl Czerny, a pupil of Beethoven. Along the way, we’re also introduced to countless notable colleagues of the day like William Kapell, Eugene Istomin, Gary Graffman, Claude Frank, even Horowitz himself, and then conductors Szell, Ormandy, Walter,  Reiner, Klemperer, Bernstein, Casals, Ozawa…the list goes on. Descriptive anecdotes, humorous personal stories and misadventures abound. One favorite story describes an impromptu rehearsal with George Szell in his London hotel room – get this! - sans piano. Fleisher says “ Szell suggested that I simply play the piece on the coffee table; he knew the concerto so well, he said, that he would be able to tell if I slipped up. So I drummed out the notes soundlessly on the tabletop until the maestro stopped me. ‘You made a mistake’, he said. ‘Well, what do you expect?’ I said. ‘I’ve never played this coffee table before.’ “

Admirably descriptive

Admirable qualities and even some musical “extras” are plentiful in this absorbing read. Firstly, Fleisher is able to describe extremely specialized musical terms in clear, layman’s language: “A trill is an embellishment over a held note that involves playing the note in rapid alteration with the note next to it, so that you get the effect of a vibration or vibrato.“  He then gives us an added treat in the form of  written-out “master classes”  which in this case are guidelines or artistic road maps of sorts, to the main works in his repertoire and which remain virtual treasure troves to the serious pianist or any music lover. Included are five descriptive chapters, one each, on specific piano concerti by Brahms, Beethoven, Ravel and Mozart and finally, one chapter on that most sublime of solo masterpieces, Schubert’s B-Flat Sonata Opus Posthumous, of which Fleisher says, quite simply, “It’s all mine.” Poetic, articulate, passionately descriptive and inspired, these pages illustrate the man’s profound musicianship as well as his extraordinary talent for words in relation to music, that most non-verbal of artistic mediums. And now, thanks to the Internet age, the publishers have even included links on the book’s page which permit live hearings of these specific pieces; accompanied by Fleisher’s verbal guidance, these masterpieces might even sound better than usual...

Warts and all

A refreshing candor permeates this autobiography. Fleisher’s prodigious musical talent clearly does not embrace all the facets of his life and he candidly describes his susceptibility to women as “my proclivity to develop lasting crushes on every woman I met.” He guides us through his subsequent twice-failed marriages while confessing a sore lack of paternal skills and attention towards his children early on. He admits, besides extreme professional pressures, a self-pity which contributes to his lack of engagement in family life when his hand stops working. Other blind spots gape at us – whether articulated or not – and we gradually piece together a portrait of someone who was admittedly self absorbed, who severely judged fellow artists not steeped in that most hallowed of musical traditions, the Schnabelian school, and of someone who also came rather late to respect music other than the traditional German repertoire. Gradually though, it dawns on us as it seems to dawn on him, that Fleisher grew as a result of his unhappy accident with his right hand, expanding to become a much more well-rounded musician and human being: “ Time and again, I would look at my life and marvel that so many wonderful things had happened that never would have happened if my hand had not been struck down. I couldn’t imagine my life without conducting. I couldn’t imagine my life without teaching so intensely…”

Despite catastrophe

The central preoccupation in Fleisher’s memoir is, above all and despite his many other professional successes, the catastrophe that struck him down in his pianistic prime ”like a hero from a Greek tragedy” or like a great eagle whose right wing had suddenly snapped, senselessly, in mid-flight. A search for every possible cure for his debilitated right hand, from the pragmatic to the most wacky, drives him onward. Despite two parallel careers as conductor and illustrious master teacher, all the while studying, playing and even enlarging the left-handed piano repertoire, he returns to his central desire to reunify with his two-handed piano playing: “Every since I could remember, the most important thing in my life had been playing the piano,” he writes in just one  of the many candid passages in this memoir. “It was more important than anything in my family when I was growing up . . . No relationship, no activity—not even my wives or my children—held the same central focus in my life, the same hold on my waking hours.”  And somehow, even Fleisher’s unending quest for healing his hand entertains us. We’re introduced to a virtual gamut of his own emotional reactions to his unlucky fate, to various physicians and a variety of endeavored treatments and even to a photograph of Leonard Bernstein pouring scotch whiskey over Fleisher’s right hand in a kind of attempted remedy.

Everybody loves a comeback

Both miraculously and inevitably, Fleisher’s hand finally starts to respond to, of all things, experimental Botox treatments. Those treatments, combined with the technique of Rolfing, do restore some mobility to his right hand, at least for limited periods of time. And gradually, quietly, working as he says, “tenaciously, ferociously, patiently”, the great eagle starts to fly again, at first tentatively for short trips through individual pieces, next for the longer flights of chamber music concert collaborations, of concerti with orchestra, of whole solo recitals, until finally, he’s able to record his first solo album in 40 years, quite simply called “Two Hands”.  Subsequently Fleisher becomes the subject of an Oscar- and Emmy-nominated documentary film of the same name. Finally Fleisher’s captivating life story culminates and ends with him receiving the United States’ highest artistic acknowledgment, the 2007 Kennedy Center Honors. He appears for it’s ceremony with his entire family in tow, calling it the “one of the happiest days of his life”, later however expressing his ambivalence towards the political stance of the current administration in a now infamous open letter published in the Washington Post and also reprinted in this autobiography.

Likable and impressive

Fleisher’s journey is interesting and well-told, a true tale of triumph over what could have easily been a crippling incapacity. Here was a world-class talent who would not, nay, who could not, give up his dream of playing again with both hands. As the Times dubbed him, Fleisher was "a pianist for whom never was never an option.”  Besides bouncing back again and again into a variety of musical disciplines, now he has also skillfully co-crafted his engaging life memoir into an informative, readable yarn, remaining both plainly likable in his candor and humanity while simultaneously impressive in his perseverance and profound dedication to music. “Playing music” Fleisher concludes, “is a state of grace. It’s an ecstasy. And it’s a privilege. After I began playing again, I never took it for granted. In all of my rich and varied life, there’s still nothing I love more.”

Acclaimed concert pianist Eliane Lust also enjoys writing on a variety of musical subjects.