音频下载[点击右键另存为][00:02.43]Playing a Violin with Three Strings断弦的小提琴
[00:06.70]On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to give a concert.
[00:14.00] If you have ever been to a Perlman concert,
[00:16.93]you know that getting on stage is no small achievement for him.
[00:21.08]He was stricken with polio as a child, and so he walks with the aid of two crutches.
[00:26.88]The audience sit quietly while he makes his way across the stage to his chair and begins his play.
[00:33.54]But this time, something went wrong.
[00:36.26]Just as he finished the first few bars, one of the strings on his violin broke.
[00:42.07]We thought that he would have to stop the concert.
[00:45.10] But he didn’t.
[00:46.55] Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then signaled the conductor to begin again.
[00:53.02]The orchestra began and he played with such passion and such power and such purity
[00:59.57]as they had never heard before.
[01:02.07]Of course, anyone knows that it is impossible to play a harmonious work with just three strings.
[01:09.08]I know that, and you know that, but that night Itzhak Perlman refused to know that.
[01:16.52]When he finished, there was an awesome silence in the room.
[01:20.78] And then people rose and cheered.
[01:23.41]There was an extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of the auditorium.
[01:28.88]He smiled, wiped the sweat from this brow and then he said
[01:33.03]——not boastfully, but in a quiet, sacred tone——
[01:36.64]"You know, sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out
[01:40.91]how much music you can still make with what you have left."
[01:44.63]This powerful line has stayed in my mind ever since I heard it.
[01:49.11] And who knows? Perhaps that is the definition of life——not just for artists but for all of us.
[01:56.66]He has prepared all his life to make music on a violin of four strings,
[02:01.91] but all of a sudden, in the middle of a concert, he finds himself with only three strings;
[02:08.04] so he makes music with three strings,
[02:10.88]and the music he made that night with just three strings was more beautiful,
[02:16.45] more sacred, more memorable, than any that he had ever made before, when he had four strings.
[02:24.22]So, perhaps our task in this shaky, fast-changing,
[02:28.61]bewildering world in which we live is to make music,
[02:32.25]at first with all that we have,
[02:34.63]and then, when that is no longer possible,
[02:37.69]to make music with what we have left.