Leon Fleisher 1928-2020

Leon Fleisher was in the thick of a major international solo career when the onset of what was ultimately diagnosed as focal dystonia in his right hand brought everything to a crashing halt in the mid-1960s. In 1982, Fleisher regained enough use of his right hand to think he was ready for a two-handed comeback. But as the opening concert in Baltimore approached, it became clear to him that his hand wasn't really ready, and that beyond that one evening, the comeback wasn't really going to happen. 

In his memoir, he described the encore documented in this video, which came at the end of an emotionally wrenching night: "I picked something that... had been a staple of my childhood: the Chopin Nocturne in D-flat, Op. 27, no. 2. It was my mother's favorite piece. It's one of Chopin's beautiful, limpid melodies.... It may never have been surrounded by such feeling as I had that night, as I fought my fingers and spun out the crystalline lines, falling across the keys like tears. But the beauty was tinged with almost unbearable pain.... Everyone was eager to celebrate with me the return of the gift I wasn't actually going to get." (From My Nine Lives, by Leon Fleisher and Anne Midgette.)

Leon ultimately did make a two-handed comeback, some 12 years later, and was able to play intermittently with both hands, in addition to his left-hand performances and his active teaching schedule, virtually until his death.