I studied for eight years with Dorothy DeLay, who was his teacher at Juilliard. She talked about things she learned teaching him, aspects of his playing, favorite jokes of his. I was always moved by her steadfast belief in his ability, even when he was just starting out, to tour as a successful performer despite his handicap. In 2005, my subsequent teacher Robert Mann was honored by the American Composers Orchestra at their benefit gala. I was asked to perform a piece composed by him and Perlman presented him with the ACO award.

People these days usually know who Itzhak Perlman is, but they sometimes don’t know the generation before: Milstein, Szigeti, Szeryng, Elman, Grumiaux. I played for Nathan Milstein when I was 13. The previous year I won the Juilliard Pre-College concerto competition and performed the Paganini Violin Concerto No. 1 with the orchestra. Someone there gave Milstein a recording of the concert, which led to his inviting me to participate in his annual week of masterclasses in Zürich, Switzerland. Corey Cerovsek and I were there along with about a dozen college students. Over the week, I played movements of the Tchaikovsky concerto, Beethoven Op. 30 No. 3 sonata, Wieniawski D major Polonaise, and Sarasate Zigeunerweisen.

I remember him joyfully playing Bach sitting at a table…at pauses or while speaking, he kept bunching lengths of a beautiful, dark silk, patterned scarf and stuffing it between his chin and the violin, with the rest of the scarf cascading down his front.  In the excitement of playing, he kept knocking the scroll of his Stradivarius violin against the table, at which we would all jump and glance at each other. He played a relatively small repertoire all his life, but he played those pieces so beautifully, his unique sound a combination of warmth and tenderness on the one hand, and directness, nobility and backbone on the other. He found endless things to experiment with, fingerings and bowing to change, notes and lines to bring out.