Give him a hand!

Last night I played a concert with a soprano in which something happened to me for the first time in a long while: my right hand worked almost as well as it did in 'the old days'! 'The old days' represent all of my performing life that went on before I slipped on the ice about eight winters ago while walking Casha on Rood Hill Road, and broke the fifth metacarpal in my right hand. The moment I hit the ground on this apparently dry dirt road, having stepped on the one patch of ice available in Berkshire County, I thought, 'You've done something really bad!' Casha came over to me lying there on the ground and looked down at me, as if to say, 'What are you doing down there, Dad?' She's not exactly a St. Bernard with the cask of brandy around her neck, (which I could have used at that point), but she knew this was not a part of our usual winter walk.

I agreed!

At the ER they X-rayed the hand and gave me the bad news. I had cracked the fifth metacarpal, which is the bone that runs through the hand below the fifth finger. They temporarily splinted it and sent me to an orthopedist who put on a permanent cast.

After a few weeks the cast came off and I found I was unable to make a fist. I could scarcely bend my fingers. So much for playing with curved fingers as I was taught by Pearl Fairchild seventy-one years ago.

I did months of therapy on the hand, which helped, but I was not able to do much at the piano. I had had to cancel a number of concerts that had been scheduled that spring. A one handed pianist is not much good in a Strauss song! I did go to New York City on a bus while still in the cast, (since I couldn't drive yet) to work with Lorraine on something or other. She seemed happy to have a one handed voice teacher.

Little by little I tried to play simple things on the piano. I think it was a full year before I tried to perform again. I found that first, I had developed some arthritis in the hand (which the rheumatologist said was not unusual) and second, I had lost a good bit of stretch. Previously I could reach one note over an octave with that hand. Now I had trouble barely reaching an octave.

I set about 're-writing' anything I played; shrinking large, filled-in chords to smaller versions of the harmony, so I could at least make it sound as if I were playing the right notes.

Bit by bit the hand has improved over the past eight years and last night, for the first time in a very long while, I was able to play Strauss, Duparc, and Rodrigo without pain and without cheating too much on large chords.

I am surprised that at my age this kind of recovery, however long in the coming, is possible. I thank my wonderful mentor, Carolyn Willard (a student of Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler, who, in turn, studied with Theodor Leschetizky) who taught me how to play the piano. Had it not been for the careful study I did with her in the 40's and my eight hours a day at the keyboard perfecting the technique in those days, I would be doing something besides playing the piano these days, which is, along with teaching, my life.