Word: pianists
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...summer of 1974, Concert Pianist Sharon Roubeck Dobkin suffered a series of seizures that left her with uncontrollable tremors, an inability to use her arms and legs or even hold her head upright. Two years and many doctors later, Dr. Melvin Van Woert of New York City's Mount Sinai Hospital identified the condition that ended her career: myoclonus, a nervous disorder that affects only 2,000 Americans. Van Woert had received a series of grants and special permission from the FDA to treat the disease with the experimental drug L-5HTP (L5-hydroxy-tryptophan), and Dobkin responded well...
Still, the unspoken question was palpable in the opening-night audience: Could he do it? The answer resounded through the new hall like a message from Olympus. After nearly two decades, Fleisher, once acclaimed the most talented pianist of his generation, had returned to the ranks. If at times he seemed a bit too rushed, eager to get through what must have been an ordeal as well as a triumph, the clarity and intelligence of his pianism were unmistakable...
...patience was rewarded. His friend and fellow pianist Gary Graffman was suffering from a similar problem and had found sympathetic and helpful doctors at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital. The doctors, Fred Hochberg, a neurologist, and Robert Leffert, an orthopedic surgeon, examined Fleisher and determined that he was suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome, a condition that occurs when swollen tissue presses against a major nerve that transmits feeling to the hand. Fleisher was operated on in January 1981 to relieve the nerve. A few months later he began follow-up treatment, a powerful and sometimes painful application of pressure...
...hand does not yet have the stamina and control it once had, but the pianist is convinced that he will soon be performing Beethoven. Delighted to be playing with ten fingers again, he is not altogether unhappy that he had only five for so long. "There is no doubt that what seemed like the end of the world to me in my little life turned into an opportunity for growth, for expansion and a widening of horizons," he says. "It's been enough to make one believe in the justice of fate and destiny." -By Gerald Clarke
DIED. Clifford Curzon, 75, sublime British pianist whose keyboard virtuosity and prodigious repertory won him world acclaim; of congestive heart failure; in London. A child prodigy, Curzon became a subprofessor at the Royal Academy of Music when he was 19. When asked to explain his musical ability he once said, "I practice and practice and work and work. I dare not take anything for granted...