Safely Grazing Again

What remedies did you try over the course of your 35 years?

I tried L-dopa [a drug used to treat Parkinson's disease], I tried aromatherapy, I tried acupuncture. I had help from a physical therapy called Rolfing. That helped deal with a contracted state of muscles. They can stretch out, over a period of time, fibers of tissue in your muscle that have been contracted for years. That's very useful.

Is dystonia very painful?

No, it wasn't. That's what's so damnable about it. For some people it is painful, but for many people it is not painful.

I noticed that the fingers on your right hand still curl in a little bit. Yes, but they're not clenched. So for 35 years, your right hand was useless. Can you talk a little about what you did with your left hand?

There is a certain [piano] literature for the left-hand. It's not because of somebody who had dystonia. There was an Austrian pianist who lived in the time of World War I who was [a] brother [of] the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Paul Wittgenstein was a soldier in the war, and got his right arm shot off. He was another obsessive-compulsive, so he used part of his fortune to commission works from the great composers of the day to write music for him: concertos for left hand and orchestra. And I'm playing one of them in May with the Philharmonic over [at] Lincoln Center. It's the Ravel [Piano Concerto in D], which is an absolute masterpiece. It's unbelievable, for one hand or two hands or 10 hands; it's just a great piece of music.