With Botox, famed pianist can play with both hands
BY LAWRENCE A. JOHNSON
Botox is one of the most toxic natural substances on Earth. Yet, in extremely minute, carefully calibrated doses, the neuroprotein produced by clostridium botulinum is also famously utilized for cosmetic purposes.
Ironically, it is that very same poisonous toxin that has enabled Leon Fleisher, one of the finest pianists of the past half century, to return to performing two-handed repertoire after a crippling illness limited him to left-hand works for nearly 40 years.
Fleisher, who turned 79 last week, returns to South Florida for his first solo recital in many years Thursday evening at Coral Gables Congregational Church. The American pianist will perform a mixed program of two-hand and left-hand repertoire alone and team up with wife Katherine Jacobson for four-hand works.
Fleisher's long artistic journey and eventual return to the standard piano repertoire is a heartening story of the human spirit as well as creative, enlightened persistence in pursuit of artistic excellence.
Few classical musicians were as lauded as the San Francisco native in the late 1950s and early 1960s. A student of the legendary Artur Schnabel, Fleisher debuted at age 16 with the New York Philharmonic in 1944. He quickly established himself as one of the leading American keyboard artists of his generation, garnering accolades in performances with the world's major orchestras.
He also enjoyed wide acclaim for his extraordinary recording partnership with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra. Their concerto collaborations for the Columbia label -- most reissued on Sony -- remain touchstones: supple and elegant Mozart, commanding and powerful Brahms and a magisterial Beethoven set, which, for many, remains peerless in its youthful fire, technical gleam and searching lyricism.
Yet in 1965 that all suddenly came crashing down when Fleisher, at the height of his fame, was practicing in preparing for a tour of the Soviet Union with Szell and the Clevelanders.
''There was an involuntary and uncontrollable contraction of the fourth and fifth fingers of the right hand,'' Fleisher says.
``In the beginning just curling under a little and then gradually over the next 10 months curling completely into the palm of the hand.''
Eventually the two fingers became completely immobile. Ultimately, his affliction was diagnosed as acute focal dystonia, an incurable neurological condition.
Fleisher plunged into a deep depression and stopped playing for three years. ''It took me a couple years to kind of fess up to the fact that it wasn't going to go away as mysteriously as it had arrived,'' said Fleisher.
While musicians' repetitive finger and hand movements clearly have something to do with it, the precise cause of focal dystonia remains a mystery. The pianist points out that there's no such thing as a cure or recovery. ''Once a dystonic, always a dystonic,'' Fleisher says. ``We just don't have a 12-Step program.''
Ultimately, he began to pull himself out of his black depression. Fleisher relaunched his career as a teacher and performer of left-hand repertoire, becoming arguably the leading exponent of Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand. He commissioned several new works for left-hand performance as well, and took up the baton, earning a respectable reputation as a conductor.
Yet through 35 years in which he was unable to perform the standard piano repertoire, Fleisher relentlessly pursued every possible avenue for a way to overcome his condition -- from Buddhism to what he described as a form of ''enlightened Rolfing,'' which he credits with partial success.
Nothing worked effectively until 1995, when Fleisher received Botox injections into his two affected fingers. ''Being the virulent poison that it is,'' he says, ''a tiny, tiny amount injected at that spot weakens that contracting muscle just a little bit.'' The involuntary nerve contraction is impaired to the extent that ``it allows the opposing muscles to take over and gain control over their normal function.''
Fleisher used to take Botox every six months, but now receives a smaller dose every four months at the National Institutes of Heath in Bethesda, Md.
And while it is not a cure, the treatment has given Fleisher sufficient control of his right hand to attempt a cautious return to two-hand repertoire, which has proven extraordinarily successful.
DOCUMENTARY ON HIM
Two Hands, Fleisher's first 10-digit recording in four decades on Vanguard, was released to wide critical acclaim in 2004. His follow-up disc, The Journey, also received strong notices, as has Fleisher's latest release, a performance of Brahms' Piano Quintet in collaboration with the Emerson String Quartet for Deutsche Grammophon. His long journey has been charted in an Oscar-nominated documentary, Two Hands, The Leon Fleisher Story, which premieres at 7 p.m. Thursday on Cinemax.
RICH ARTISTRY
Fleisher's return to two-hand music demonstrates that his many years in the wilderness have had little ill effect on his artistry. If anything, his nuanced and poetic Bach, Chopin and Mozart playing has become even richer and deeper than before.
Even so, Fleisher is extremely judicious about the music he performs, choosing only works he feels he can do justice to. ''Certain kinds of passage work are difficult for me,'' he says. ``I certainly can't play Rachmaninoff. I do the Beethoven Fifth [Concerto]. The Fourth I look at from time to time but I don't think I can hack it.''
Thursday night's recital will also feature Katherine Jacobson, Fleisher's wife, who will join him in four-hand works. Fleisher discusses the challenge of closely coordinating performances with another pianist with characteristic good humor.
''When you play four hands at one piano, the big problem is who does the pedaling,'' he says. 'That's a subject for a big discussion. We've invented a category of divorce tort law, which is `Irreconcilable Pedaling.' ''
Lawrence A. Johnson is The Miami Herald's classical music critic.
lajohnson@MiamiHerald.com