The Curtis Symphony Orchestra - Sunday April 23, 2006 - Verizon Hall
Christoph Eschenbach, conductor
Gary Graffman, piano

RAVEL Concerto for Piano (Left Hand) and Orchestra
BARTÓK Concerto for Orchestra
STRAVINSKY Firebird Suite (1919)

Tickets on sale at the Kimmel Center Box Office or from Ticket Philadelphia, 215-893-1999 or www.ticketphiladelphia.org

Gary: Well don't forget that my life has not been involved in any way in administration until I got to Curtis. When I came to Curtis exactly twenty years ago I was in my fifties and it was all new and yet, specially at that time the administration part was almost insignificant, it was all artistic matters that were being discussed because we obviously have people on the board who know how to invest the endowments. I've been thinking six or seven years ago enough is enough.  I wanted to be involved with Curtis and I will be involved with Curtis. Instead of having three students I will have five to six students next year. I will be a normal faculty person coming in from New York to teach. So I will have more time for other things. As the years went by there were more things involved that didn't involve music like fund raising. I won't be working on fund raising anymore. If they need my help I will be there like any faculty member.

Gary: When I cam to Curtis twenty years ago the endowment was fifty million, that was 1986 in 1987 the endowment went down to forty-two million because the stock market crashed. It went right up to fifty million about six months later because the market went up, now it's one hundred fifty million. Now obviously I personally didn't get the one hundred million but of course I was involved, which also involved the stock market going up. When you said forty million I imagine that was the combination of two drives that we had. One was the first at Curtis which raised over five million and a very a recent one that raised forty five million.

Gary: Very much so. You get so involved with the students. They're so fantastic, the level is frightening actually. Well, when I came we accepted around 15% of the people who applied. Now it is more like 5%. Anybody who is accepted at Curtis is really quite amazing to start with whether they are ten years or in the case of singers in their mid twenties. So you're dealing with a small percent of the musical population and I will continue to be dealing with them so I won't be giving that up.

Before Curtis all I did as play concerts, I averaged about one hundred concerts a year for about thirty years. Then my hand problems started and I couldn't play decently with my right hand so I started to learn left hand repertoire and I've been playing thirty to thirty five concerts a year during these twenty years I was at Curtis. I will continue to do that maybe slightly more but there is a limited repertoire for the left hand.

PCM: What exactly happened to your hand, I have read many different things one being that you have a rare muscular disease.

Gary: It's not so rare, I lose control of my fourth and fifth finger on my right hand with absolutely no pain. It just starts to cave in and the hand contracts to the side and I start to play the wrong notes. I go to play an octave and I play one note below the octave. It's called Focal Dystonia. Focal Dystonia can be in many parts of the body, some facial ticks around the eye, where it is difficult to open or close the eyes or some people have it in the legs. This is a rather minor case but it is major for a pianist. There is no pain. I can use my right hand for everything else its just as strong as before, like for opening wine bottles. They don't have a cure for it. The brain sends out wrong or interrupted signals, they're not even clear what it is. Of course I went to doctors in the beginning, nobody knew what it was and the fear was that is was something more serious and life threatening. Once that went away and nothing was helping, exercises didn't help I found it to be useless to keep going to doctors. Also remember that for thirty years I played lots of concerts and made lots of records, so if it happened to me in the early twenties I would have felt cheated.

Gary: I canceled two hundred concerts, I canceled two years of concerts.

Gary: Yes, of course! Then I started to teach at Curtis and the Manhattan School. That was in 1981. Then I started learning some left hand repertoire and playing a few concerts in comparison to what I played before. In 1986 when they made me director of Curtis, I didn't have time to teach anywhere else. The little bit of teaching I did in Manhattan by the way, they were in some cases Curtis students. At Curtis we don't give anything more than a BA, so some Curtis students went to study with me to get a Masters or a D.M.A..

Gary: Well you can't cancel two hundred concerts and say you have the flu. People knew what happened.

Almost every performer on any instrument gets that or some form of that at some point, that sometimes has to do with being overly tense, sometimes sitting higher or lower. In most cases it goes away. Did yours go away?

Gary: We made an arrangements to have the same sort of academic possibilities at Curtis. We are now accepted by the Middle States Commission and National Association of Schools so that if you graduate from Curtis and you have a BA, it is accepted by Harvard, University of Indiana or anywhere if they want to go on to get higher degrees. We didn't have that before.

However being such a small school if a student wants to study something we don't teach we can't bring a professor in for that one student. We made an arrangement with the University of Pennsylvania that the student can take the class there if they are intellectually able to take the class at no cost to the student or Curtis. In return we will do a reading each year of music by their composition students. They have a good composition department. It is good for our students because they learn how to immediately adjust to a new work and good for their students. That has been going on since about the time I started with Curtis, I assume it will continue.

PCM: You have a few performances coming up.

Gary: Yes, I am going to China next week, I'm playing Prokofiev's 4th Concerto, and on April 23rd I am playing Ravel's Concerto with Eschenbach. It's a fund raiser for Curtis.

Gary: Yes, he called me from Florida where he is performing.

Gary: Yes, I am.