The pianist's first big attempt to resume two-hand playing was also with the BSO, for the opening of Meyerhoff Hall in 1982. "In hindsight, he probably wasn't really ready," Marvine says. "He was struggling the whole time, but still pulled it off beautifully."
Fleisher retreated back to left-hand territory, but continued to appear with the BSO locally and on tour with left-hand concertos. "It was spectacular and exquisite, what we did together," Kolker says of those concerts.
The collaborations continued after the experimental botox therapy began. Most recently, with Marin Alsop conducting, Fleisher gave a patrician account of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 12 in 2006.
He'll reprise that work on this week's birthday concerts, conducting from the keyboard. And from the podium, he'll lead the orchestra in performances of two Mozart symphonies, No. 35 and No. 40.
Although denied the satisfaction of two-hand piano playing for decades, Fleisher's artistic life hardly ever slowed. In addition to the conducting sideline, he was founding director of the Theater Chamber Players at the Kennedy Center.
"People keep asking me if I could live my life over, would I leave out the episode of focal dystonia," Fleisher says. "I'm not sure if I would change anything."
He might, however, change some of the musical decisions he made back in the two-fisted glory days of his early career.
"I don't listen to my old recordings," the pianist says, "but I did hear by accident my [1960 recording of the] Liszt B minor Sonata. I remember being proud of that at the time, but I was taken aback. What had I been proud of? It seemed angst-ridden."
Fleisher, readily admitting that "the piece is angst-ridden," questions his tempos on that recording.
If he were to play it now - botox can't restore all the strength needed for such a finger-buster - he would want to bring "an increased awareness of everything that is contained in the music. There is more stuff that needs a little more time to be absorbed and relished," he says. "That's my way of saying I played too damn fast."
(That Liszt recording, along with five other vintage Fleisher albums, recorded 1956-1963, will be digitally released by Sony BMG Masterworks on Tuesday as a birthday salute.)
The topic of velocity is one that Fleisher thinks deeply about, especially when considering the next generation of keyboard talents.
