Before the injury, Gary Graffman's performing career had spanned three decades with most of the world's major orchestras. But in 1979, at age 50, the pianist no longer could use his right hand.

        “Nobody really knew what was wrong, and I didn't have any pain,” the pianist by phone says from New York. “I wasn't suffering. Maybe it would come back. In the meantime, why shouldn't I learn the Ravel Concerto for Left Hand? Prokofiev was probably the second major work I learned.”

        Mr. Graffman will perform Prokofiev's rarely heard Concerto No. 4 for the left hand, to open the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra season Sunday and Monday.

IF YOU GO

What: Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, Mischa Santora, conductor; Gary Graffman, pianist     When, where: 3 p.m. today, Corbett Auditorium, University of Cincinnati; 7:30 Monday, Greaves Concert Hall, Northern Kentucky University     Tickets: $4-$20; 723-1182     The program: J.S. Bach, Suite No. 4 in D Major; Prokofiev, Piano Concerto No. 4; Beethoven, Symphony No. 8 in F Major.

        Mr. Graffman, now 72, had focal distonia, a baffling injury that causes loss of motor control, caused by repetitive stress. After trying various treatments without success, he resigned himself to the fact that he could not play with his right hand. But he did not want to quit performing.

        “For 30 years, I was playing 200 concerts a year, from the age of 20 to 50. I still wanted to do it,” Mr. Graffman says.

        He started to concentrate on repertoire for the left hand, little-known works by Benjamin Britten, Richard Strauss and Franz Schmidt. He gave the North American premiere of a left-hand concerto by Erich Wolfgang Korngold with the New York Philharmonic.

        Soon, just as Ravel wrote his concerto for German pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm in World War I, composers began to write for Mr. Graffman.

        ""Ned Rorem wrote a wonderful concerto for me,” he says. “Now, I'm knocking myself out; I'm practicing more now than I have since I stopped playing with two hands — I'm doing three world premieres this very season — three concertos that have been written for me.”
       Today, his challenge as a concert pianist has nothing to do with his hands and everything to do with time.

        “That's my great problem. Yesterday I was teaching until 9 p.m., and then I practiced for two hours,” says Mr. Graffman, whose other hats include distinguished teacher and administrator at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

        In 1980, one year after his injury, Mr. Graffman returned to his alma mater, the Curtis Institute, to teach. He became director in 1986 and president in 1995.

        “As I'm getting older, more and more conductors that I play with have diplomas that are signed by me,” he says, laughing. “In fact, the diplomas of both conductors in Cincinnati — Mischa Santora and Paavo Jarvi — were signed by me.”

        Although this is his first visit to Cincinnati in decades, Mr. Graffman remembers a November 1964 performance with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra under Max Rudolf. At the time, Cincinnati native James Levine, now Metropolitan Opera artistic director, was studying with conductor George Szell in Cleveland.

        “Szell was so close to Rudolf, they spoke every day on the phone. And Szell recommended this boy, (saying), he's from Cincinnati, he's not experienced, but maybe he should be given a chance,” he says, laughing.. “(Mr. Levine) wasn't trusted with the whole program, but he did the first half, and then I played the Brahms D Minor Concerto, but Max conducted.”

        Today, Mr. Graffman is a link to a legendary tradition of piano playing. Born in New York, he began to play the piano at age 3. At 7, he was accepted at Curtis to study with the renowned Isabelle Vengerova. In later years, he worked with Vladimir Horowitz and Rudolf Serkin.

        Pianists have not changed much, but audience expectations have, he says.

        “Everybody — (Arthur) Rubinstein, (Artur) Schnabel, Horowitz and Serkin — always played wrong notes,” he says. “But once the LP came in, and you repeated the same passage three times, and they spliced it, the audience got used to note-perfect performances.

        “Now, when a great pianist in a live performance makes an obvious clinker, which everybody does ... it's quite different from my generation, when nobody cared,” he says.

        Playing all the right notes is “a superficial criterion,” he says.

        “There are as many great performances of a Beethoven sonata as there are great interpreters. And every generation will have some new ones.”

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