American pianist and conductor who could not remember a time when his life did not revolve around a piano. He was one of the most renowned pianists and pedagogues in the world.
The younger son of a San Francisco hat-maker and his wife, he became a student of renowned Austrian pianist Artur Schnabel when he was nine years old and made his Carnegie Hall debut at 16. At 24, he won the prestigious Queen Elizabeth of Belgium International Music competition and became an instant celebrity. In 1964, he was considered the finest American pianist of his generation.
Over the next ten months, as a result of overwork and pressure from his celebrity status, he suffered paralysis of his right hand. Looking at the possibility that this may be end of a brilliant career, he was so distraught that he considered suicide as a way out. The disease left doctors puzzled until the 1980s when the condition became known as “repetitive stress syndrome” when muscles and tissues are traumatized from repeated overuse.
With his hand so crippled that he could barely write his name, Fleisher went from one therapy to another. Finding conventional treatments to fail, he turned to alternative therapies such as hypnosis, acupuncture and bio-feedback, attending seminars and psychiatric lectures. In February 1995, his third wife, Katherine Jacobson, a pianist and music professor at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland, persuaded him to try a form of deep tissue massage called Rolfing. After only three sessions, he felt his right hand begin to loosen.
Over the 30 years since he left the stage in 1965 he tried seemingly every medical and psychiatric treatment that held a glimmer of hope: acupuncture, hypnosis, a deep-tissue massage called myotherapy, est, L-dopa, steroid injections, biofeedback, Tiger Balm, and many others. In 1981 he had surgery to alleviate carpal tunnel syndrome.
In April 1995, he resumed playing, using both hands with the Washington-based Theater Chamber Players, a group he had co-founded in 1968. On 13 January 1996, he played his first Carnegie Hall concert in over 30 years in which he used both hands.
At the height of his career, Fleisher’s private life had suffered. His first marriage, which produced three kids, failed due to his continual absences on tour. His second marriage, with two kids, fell apart after his injury. He admitted to a funk of self-pity as a contributing factor. He tried playing with his left hand only, a slim repertoire of compositions mainly by Ravel, Prokofiev and Britten that had been commissioned by a wealthy Austrian pianist who had lost his right arm in WWI. Fleisher also moved into conducting and teaching, where his students called him the “Obi-Wan Kenobi of piano teachers.” Nothing meant as much as playing and, as a two-handed piano player, he said that “What happened to me has expanded my life, my awareness, my humanity.”
His memoir, My Nine Lives, co-written with the Washington Post music critic Anne Midgette, came out in November 2010. Leon Fleisher died on 2 August 2020 at age 92.
Link to Wikipedia biography