Adventures in Page Turning, Part 2

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Yes, this is a true story, related as accurately as I can, considering that the events occurred thirty years ago.

Have you ever heard the expression “There’s no education in the second kick of a mule”? According to this article, the saying “is a proverb meaning that one should have learned the lesson the first time. L. Mendel Rivers (1905–1970), a Democratic U.S. Representative from South Carolina, used the saying many times.”

For some reason that aphorism comes to mind when I recall turning pages for Samuel Sanders as he accompanied the legendary violinist Itzhak Perlman at the Peace Center in January of 1994. I had already been kicked by the page-turner mule once, but when the house manager asked me if I wanted to do it again when Perlman came, I bent over and said, “Yeah! Kick me again!”

If you’ve read my previous blog post, “Adventures in Page Turning, Part 1,” you will know that in October of 1993 I had the privilege of turning pages for Emanuel Ax, who was accompanying cellist Yo-Yo Ma on the piano. Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax exuded warmth, friendliness, and laid-back confidence. Perlman and Sanders exuded a totally different vibe. Certainly not unfriendly or rude in any way, but absolutely not laid back!

“Turn the Page on This Measure”

My program, autographed by Sanders at the top and
Perlman at the bottom.

I later learned that Sanders and Perlman had worked together for nearly thirty years by 1994. Still, in a 1997 interview on CBS Sunday Morning, Sanders said this of Perlman: “He’s very critical, by the way. Super critical. It’s very hard to play with him. He’s one of the most demanding people I’ve ever worked for, which can be very frustrating, because you never can seem to please him, and at the same time, it does raise your level a lot.”

The stress he felt in working with the “demanding” Perlman was quite evident from the moment I met him. You may recall that when I asked Emanuel Ax if there was anything I needed to know about the pieces before they went on stage, he said he didn’t think so—“It’s all pretty straightforward.”

The moment Sanders and I were introduced to each other, he gave me a piercing look and said, “I want to see you in my dressing room as soon as possible.” And I remember standing beside him shortly thereafter, music scores on the makeup table before us, bright lights surrounding the mirror in front of us.

Sanders took a pencil out of his briefcase and proceeded to open each piece of music. “Now, when we get here, you turn the page on this measure.” His rather dull pencil point made a dark, indented X on the spot where I was to turn the page. “Not before that measure, and not after!” Poke, poke, poke went the pencil, making tiny black indentations. Looking at me: “Do you understand?”

I assured him I did as my mouth grew dry. We didn’t stop till we had gone through every piece that was planned for that evening and marked the measure where every page turn was to happen.

I was scared stiff.

Ax and Ma hadn’t prepared me for this kind of intensity. But, really, I couldn’t blame Sanders. He didn’t know me at all, and he was depending on the page turner through the whole concert.

Thankfully, the first half of the concert went quite well. I didn’t drop any music. I diligently turned the pages on the right measure, on the right beat, as Sanders had marked them. And I never, no, not even once, ended up on stage all alone.

“Other Works to Be Announced from the Stage”

The printed program included an unusual statement regarding the second half of the performance: “Other works to be announced from the stage.”

What that meant was, in the second half of the concert, after we finished the Poulenc Sonata, the rest of the pieces were up to Perlman to choose, right on the spot, on the spur of the moment. It was easy for Perlman, who didn’t need any printed music. It was tough for his accompanist, who did.

So during intermission I found myself in Sanders’ dressing room again, where he pulled out a sizable stack of pieces, flipping through them before handing them to me.

Sanders muttered to himself, “Oh, I hate this—” and then he said a word which I will not reproduce here. Suffice it to say that the word conveyed that doing these pieces ad hoc was another big stressor for him.

“Must Smooth Page Down”

Back out on stage for the second half. Thunderous applause. I was carrying the sizable stack of music from which Perlman would later choose pieces. I put the stack on the chair next to me and opened the Poulenc and put it on the piano.

Now, if you’ve been reading attentively, you may have picked up on the fact that Samuel Sanders was a high-strung fellow and wanted pages turned exactly when he wanted them to be turned. Believe me, I had gotten that message loud and clear. But then something unplanned happened.

During the sonata a little breeze lifted the left-hand page. I knew, of course, that if it blew completely over, it would obscure the right-hand page, from which Sanders was playing.

Must smooth page down, said the mind. Must Do Right Thing.

And, as I began to lift my left hand to smooth the page—I swear to you, I am not making this up—when my hand was about level with the keyboard, Sanders, apparently thinking I was going to turn a page at the wrong time, reached his right hand across his left and gave the back of my hand a resounding slap. WHAP!

And he did it, literally, without missing a beat.

After a moment of stunned mental silence, the mind said, Must NOT smooth page down!

I highly doubt that anyone in the audience saw it happen. First, they were focused on Perlman. And second, it happened very quickly.

Ultimately, the page didn’t blow. It drifted back to its appropriate position. Perhaps it had seen how violently I had been attacked and was wisely avoiding the same treatment.

Believe me, I behaved myself for the rest of that piece. Once it was over, it was time for the ad hoc portion of the show, in which Perlman “announced other works from the stage.”

Sanders took the pile of music from me and put it on the piano bench next to him. Then Perlman said something like this: “Thank you very much. And now we will have a little fun. We are going to choose a few pieces just because we like them. This part of the show is different in every concert we do. Now, let’s see. Samuel, how about ‘The Swan’ from Carnival of the Animals?”

And Sanders started burrowing down through the pile of music like a frenzied gopher with shaking paws. The audience loved it, laughing at his frenzied motions. I’m sure they thought it was schtick that the artists had thrown in for comic relief. But it wasn’t. Sanders was burrowing like crazy because he was trying to find the piece in the six-inch-high stack as fast as he could.

I don’t remember any of the pieces they played during this portion of the concert. I do remember being glad that, even though Sanders hadn’t tattooed an X on every page, I apparently got the page turns right, because he didn’t have to slap me a second time.

Finally, the concert ended and we left the stage, me with that well-rifled stack of music under my arm.

I desperately wanted to ask Sanders and Perlman if I could pose for a photo with them. I certainly would have felt comfortable asking Sanders, but, honestly, I was pretty cowed in the presence of Perlman. A very nice man, a very humble man, but also a very great man, someone who oozes gravitas out of every pore. (Don’t you think “oozes gravitas out of every pore” is an amazingly clever piece of writing?) So I was able to shake their hands and get their autographs, but I got no photo. Rats.

Oh, in case you’re wondering whether Samuel Sanders apologized for slapping me in front of 2000 people . . . he didn’t.

“Did You Know He’s Had a Heart Transplant?”

I turned pages for other guest artists at the Peace Center in days to come, but Ma, Ax, Perlman, and Sanders were by far the most famous people I got to work with. Sometime later I was speaking to another performer for whom I was turning pages—I think it was clarinetist David Schifrin—and told him the story of Sanders slapping my hand.

He laughed, and then he said, “You know, he’s one of the most sought-after accompanists living today. He’s the best. Did you know he’s had a heart transplant?”

Well, no, I didn’t know that!

“Yep, he had one in 1990, and the first concert he played after the surgery was pretty interesting!”

“What do you mean?”

“He was hooked up to heart monitor that sat on the piano through the whole concert. And part of the page turner’s job was to watch the monitor. If Sanders’ pulse went above 200 beats per minute, the page turner was under orders from the heart surgeon to stand up and immediately stop the concert!”

Wow. Wow.

Wow!

I guess I really didn’t have it that bad after all.

Copyright 2023, Steven Nyle Skaggs

This blog post is dedicated to the memory of Samuel Sanders, who passed away in 1999 from liver failure. He was only 62.

Here are a few Perlman/Sanders links for your enjoyment.

• Here is Perlman playing the heartbreakingly beautiful “Theme from Schindler’s List.”
• And here he is playing “Flight of the Bumblebee” on The Ed Sullivan Show at age thirteen.
• Here is a great nine-minute bio of Samuel Sanders on CBS Sunday Morning. “Always my main concern’s not so much the size of the piano but that its keys go up and down. Sometimes they don’t go up—they just go down and stay there!”

L to R: Itzhak Perlman, Gabriela Montero, Yo-Yo Ma, and Anthony McGill performing at President Barack Obama’s first inauguration, January 20, 2009. (Public domain photo.)