Living to Tell the Tale

Janet Horvath

Janet Horvath was the associate principal cellist of the Minnesota Orchestra for over three decades. She was born into a family of musicians and studied with the legendary cellist and teacher, János Starker at Indiana University, Jacobs School of Music Bloomington Indiana. During her studies, she first experienced a repetitive strain injury (RSI), which led her to become an advocate for musicians’ health and the author of a seminal and ground-breaking work on injury prevention: Playing (less) Hurt.

After experiencing acute hearing trauma during a performance in 2010, which forced her into an early retirement from the orchestra, she established a thriving second career as a writer. She’s written hundreds of articles for various journals including The Atlantic and Interlude and will be releasing her new book: The Cello Still Sings: A Generational Story of the Holocaust and of the Transformative Power of Music in Summer 2021.

Janet Horvath, interviewed by Heather O’Donnell

HO: You come from a family of musicians. Can you tell me about the beginnings of your life as a musician?

JH: Both of my parents came from Budapest, Hungary, and were professional musicians. My father was a cellist in the Budapest Symphony when he was in his early twenties, then the war intervened. After my parents survived the Holocaust, they never spoke about it, but the traumas they experienced hovered over us every day. During his 38 years with the Toronto Symphony, my father had played with many of the most famous conductors and loved to ‘talk shop’ with me. One day when I was already well into my adulthood, I was driving my father to one of his many doctor's appointments on a wretched January day. On that day, I asked him innocently enough: ‘Dad, did you ever play with Leonard Bernstein?’, you know, one of my idols. I had never asked him about Bernstein before. The question was met with Silence. It looked as if he’d passed out. His eyes rolled up, his hands went to his face. I thought: ‘Oh no… should I pull over? What did I ask? After several minutes, he ‘came to’, and divulged a secret: ‘Yes... It was a very hot day. It was in the Displaced Persons camps. Bernstein was just a kid and he played Rhapsody in Blue, on the piano and it was just fantastic…’. My father spoke about the program and remembered the music. I was stunned. Before I could gather my thoughts to ask any of the questions buzzing through my mind: ‘What were you doing in Germany?’, ‘Was my mother there?’, ’How did you get instruments?’ and all the questions I never dared ask, the memory faded or he didn't want to discuss it anymore. As soon as I could I did some research and found out that there had been a printed program and photographs. I found out later that my father played over 200 concerts: morale-boosting programs in a little orchestra of 17 Jewish musicians who’d also survived the Holocaust, and they were bussed twice a week all over Bavaria. Two of those concerts were with Leonard Bernstein conducting.

George Horvath

 Music was their lifeline. Music opened the door to a new country [Canada], to a new language, and to a new world. My parents hoped to show others that there was still beauty in life; that there might be a reason to go on living. They believed in the importance and moral power of music and art to the community and all of humanity.

 My mother was a pianist and a teacher and had a wonderful class of young people coming and going all the time in our house. When I was able to pick out some of the tunes my mother was teaching on the piano, my parents thought: ‘Oh… she's very talented… we should start her on the piano.’ As soon as I was playing a little, at age four or five, they thought: ‘Okay, we won't waste her on the piano. Let's have her take up the cello because it'll be so beautiful to see her come out on stage in a long dress’. And it was unusual in those days. There weren't too many women cellists at that time. Of course, they never took into consideration that I would be tiny—my hands are tiny, and I'm under five feet tall!

Janet Horvath, age 9

 Nonetheless, I became a very good pianist. At the same time, my father tried to teach me cello and that resulted in a lot of battles about practicing! I’d practice cello before school and piano after school when my mother did the dishes (always eavesdropping), and I basically didn't have steady lessons with other teachers, because nobody was ‘good enough’ for my father. When I made up my mind that I really did want to play the cello, they made up their mind that I should study with János Starker, who was, in their opinion, the most ideal teacher, an incredible teacher. [Starker taught at Indiana University in Bloomington from 1958 until his death in 2013.]  

János Starker, with cat

UNCG Special collections and University Archives Greensboro North Carolina Cello Music Collection

I felt like I had something to prove. People often said I was too small to play the cello, you know? What am I to do with these [small] hands, I mean, these fingerings don't work for me. And sure enough, I did hurt myself because I locked myself in a practice room for hours at a time, (I didn’t want to lose one of the few practice rooms!) and likely also because I was lonely, and I was away from home for the first time. Starker, a tremendous teacher, was also very much in demand as a soloist, especially in those days, so when he was at IU, he would give us three lessons a week. We had to play different repertoire in each lesson because he didn't necessarily want to help us perfect or polish a piece. Rather, he wanted his students to have contact with as much repertoire as possible. So, he would have us go through tons of repertoire. Starker held several-hour master classes on Saturdays, which were attended by most of the school. They hung onto Starker's every word, even if they weren't his student, even if they were pianists or other instrumentalists. You know, it was really scary. We often would be playing something we knew for less than a week. Starker’s students were those he felt could readily assimilate a lot of information in a short amount of time and then be disciplined enough to be able to work through that information while he was away on tour, often for a month or weeks at a time.

He wasn't in town when I made up my mind I wanted to be ‘the best Starker student who ever lived’, and I practiced and practiced and practiced. I’m petite, I wasn’t used to the rigor, and I wasn’t smart about my body. We were taught to produce at any cost. I started to hurt. I immediately thought: ‘This can't be hurting- no no no… that couldn’t be’. I disregarded the pain. Then when it hurt so much it couldn’t be ignored, I tried to justify it by saying: ‘Well, no pain no gain’, right? That was the prevailing mentality in those days -  I'll be a better musician if I play through the pain. I couldn't have been more wrong. It got to the point where I couldn't turn a doorknob, or use a knife and fork, or wash my hair, or hold my hands up over my head. I had let it go far too long, to the point that I had a raging case of what we now call repetitive strain injury (RSI) or tendonitis, but then we called it ‘Bloomington-itis’. (only half in jest!) You know, there were other people in the school who overdid it, but we’d whisper in the halls embarrassed, with shame, and we wouldn't admit it. I remember the time as bleak because I not only thought my life was over, since I could no longer play, but also that I was a bad musician and obviously a bad person because our image - our idea of who we are - is so wrapped up in our instrument and our ability to play.

By the time Starker returned from this particular tour, I had seen several doctors. I went to everyone, from osteopaths to neurologists and orthopedic people searching for answers. I cried on the phone to my parents, who'd never heard of such a thing and couldn't figure out what to do with me. Should I come home? In those days, the simplistic responses from the doctors was so discouraging: ‘How can it hurt to play?’ (implying that it's not physical not like ditch-digging or playing football). ‘Oh… you musicians! You're so sensitive, maybe even a little hysterical?’, because I know now, soft tissue injuries don't show up on standard tests. My favorite response was ‘Oh… you should really try another career!’, which, obviously, at that point I wouldn't even consider. When Starker returned to Indiana to teach and saw my situation, he hid his horror quite well. He started me over, from the beginning, starting with the basics— teaching me to use my body with ease, to use weight, never force, to play and sit with better posture, and to be really aware of how I'm using my body.

London Debut, 1986

We all have to be constantly attentive. Even our words, our nomenclature in music, imply force: ‘attack’, ‘bite’, you know. I try to steer away from those words.

HO: It seems that Starker was very responsive, and that your fears that he would be judgmental weren’t founded?

JH: He was wonderful even though I think I might have been the first person he'd encountered with these kinds of problems. We started over, and for five or six months I played very little, very gradually increasing the duration of time I spent playing. Now, I'm happy that this injury happened, because I learned how to be vigilant about my technique early on. Moreover, Starker taught me how to teach. He taught not only me, but all of his students, how to use our bodies more efficiently. I feel this was the birth of my career as an injury prevention advocate, to promote ease of playing and expression, and to develop strategies to avoid physically taxing ourselves to the point of injury. We musicians have very long careers. We are the ‘Olympians of the Small Muscles’, and our profession is not like athletes whose careers usually end when they are in their 30s.

Some of us play into our 60s, 70s, and 80s. Since we play for many decades, it’s important to develop a mindset early on as to how to protect ourselves, to watch for danger signals, to understand our injury susceptibilities, and to have an awareness of anatomy. It’s important to learn how you should hold your body and your instrument and to use some of the tools out there, the ergonomics, orthotics, instrument modifications, as well as to practice body-mind techniques such as Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais, Pilates, and Yoga.

I do Yoga every day. It’s important to know that there's help out there if something should happen. If you have pain or clumsiness, stop and analyze what you're doing. Get help from some of the professionals now focusing on Performing Arts Medicine, which wasn't a field when I was starting out. So, that's a long way of saying: Yes, I hurt myself when I was in college and I lived to tell the tale.

In rehearsal with the Minnesota Orchestra

With Anthony Ross, principal cello

 When I won my position as associate principal cello of the Minnesota Orchestra in 1980, I was horrified that there were, at the time, at least half a dozen people out with playing-related injuries. In those days, we'd rather call in sick with leprosy because a playing injury was such a stigma – we felt it was a reflection on our musicianship. And I thought: ‘Well, we have to do something about this!’ I had already been in contact with a few doctors (like Alice Brandfonbrener) who were amateur players or whose children played. I decided to organize a conference here in Minneapolis sponsored by the University of Minnesota. I didn't expect it to snowball. We had over 500 people attend, representing many of the conservatories and orchestras in the country. After that my phone was ringing off the hook.

People made a beeline to me. Musicians wanted first to only talk to me rather than to doctors. I ended up writing my book [Playing (less) Hurt], basically in self-defense! I tried to get information out to people who called or emailed, and I quickly realized: We need a resource for musicians written in our own terms and one that will help educate doctors, to teach them our terminology, so they might understand when someone comes in and says: ‘Oh, you know, when I play downbow staccato, it really hurts’. The health care professionals and we musicians needed a better understanding of what our daily and cumulative strains are.

 HO: When you wrote the book were you working together with physiotherapists or doctors or were you using your own experience as a basis?

 JH: Of course, I used my own experience, but I ran everything by the medical doctors Alice Brandfonbrener and Richard Lederman and other experts such as the physical therapists we have here, so everything was checked out to make sure all the information was medically correct.

HO: When you became well-known for injury recovery and prevention did you experience any kind of stigmatization in your professional life? Did you sense a different treatment for you (as a person who spoke openly about injury) as opposed to other musicians who kept their injuries secret?

 JH: You know, I didn't ever encounter that. Perhaps it was because I had a very prominent position. I played lots of solos, chamber music, and recitals. As an elite performer, it was obvious that I no longer suffered from restrictions. Musicians trusted me, and so did the orchestra administration even though they sometimes didn't like what I had to say (such as taking time off from playing!). The Minnesota Orchestra was very progressive about these ideas. They initiated a “Work Hardening Program”, an unfortunate term, but it’s very effective (it's taken from the occupational therapy industry.) The workplace is used as a part of a therapy program to get injured people back into their jobs, and it's been around for a long time. “Work Hardening”, or a gradual return to playing program, has worked at the Minnesota Orchestra, and was one of the first programs like it in the US.

HO: So, thinking back to your own injuries, after having worked so intensively with Starker to find solutions for playing more efficiently and with more ease, was that sufficient to keep you healthy throughout the course of your career in terms of your hands and arms?

 JH: Yes and No. Of course, it helped a lot, but we have to be aware that many of these awkward postures and large or unnatural stretches or reaches are built into the repertoire. I'm not only known as “The Hurt Lady”, but also as “The Counting Lady”. My favorite story involves Ravel’s Bolero. Almost all musicians and laymen know the piece. In Bolero, the poor snare drum player has to play a two-bar 24-note pattern, over and over in the 430 bars of the piece. I thought: ‘I have to count this!’ (Sometimes we even play it twice in one day.) I counted the drum strokes, and it came to 5,144! So, I went running to our snare drum player, and asked: ‘Do you have any idea how many snare drum strokes there are in Bolero?’ He said: ‘I don't know, Janet, 600? 800?’ I told him: ‘Well, it's 5,144.’ He looked stunned, ‘Oh. I don't want to know that,” he said, ‘Janet. Don't tell me that. Did you really count them?’

 Musicians need to focus on how much repetition is written into our repertoire. How many difficult technical demands there are. How to make our playing easier. I say to people: ‘I'm not a genius, but I'm always thinking: okay, how can I make this difficult passage easier for me? How can I take a little mini-break, even during a concert, for example, just one shoulder roll, and not sitting like a statue?’

I find it helpful to keep a diary and to plan practicing, to write in warming-up, taking breaks, and cooling-down. If we have the discipline to practice, let's have the discipline to take the breaks that we need, to move around when we need to, and to write down how it felt. People often come to me and say: ‘Well this suddenly hurts.’ Typically, injuries do not occur ‘suddenly’. They are usually cumulative - over weeks or months, sometimes even over the course of a career. Keeping a diary allows us to be able to trace back to what we were playing, what we were doing, how we were feeling, and is a very helpful tool to understand how an injury began. Fatigue is usually the first indicator: ‘Oh yeah, I could really nail this passage two weeks ago no problem and now my fingers just don't want to do it’ - that can be the first sign of something going awry.

HO: What sources of support did you develop and draw on?

I'm persistent in maintaining my own health at the cello. I developed a team: a very experienced personal trainer who I’ve used a lot, a yoga teacher, a massage therapist, as well as excellent doctors and physical therapists who I know. I’m only partly kidding when I say, my car knows the way to the medical facility in town, because as soon as anything was going on, I was there. But, as I said, I'm small, I’ve experienced wear and tear, and professional orchestras have tremendously difficult and grueling schedules. I've had my share of injuries. I’ve experienced two frozen shoulders: one took 18 months to heal, the other took a year. That's a really very painful and debilitating condition, you can't do anything. I couldn't even get my hands up to the computer to type. But let me remind your readers that injuries can and do happen to even the most elite performers, just as in athletics the “stars” can experience injury.

In terms of support in the orchestra, we had a very sympathetic personnel manager who advocated for us. In other orchestras, you know, there’s the sense that people are expendable. There are hundreds of young people out there knocking on the door, desperate to get into the orchestra and win a position. So, if you're waylaid by an injury, some orchestras don't offer the same kind of receptivity as we have in Minnesota. Those of us in the field are working on having managements look at us as an irreplaceable team, like a sports team. Our managements ought to have the best physical therapists on-site ready to race out and treat whatever has happened during a performance like they do for star athletes in a game or practice. We're star players, too, and we're an ensemble that has developed a unique sound over the course of many years due to the contributions of each and every individual who plays with the orchestra.

Landsberg, Germany, photo by Conny Kurz

HO: Can you talk about your experience with Hyperacusis? [Hyperacusis is a debilitating hearing disorder in which everyday sounds are perceived as uncomfortably loud and physically painful. Janet Horvath has written about this condition in The Atlantic]

JH: Sadly, I suffered from a noise-induced ear injury called hyperacusis. That was the end. And it was devastating. I must say, at that point, I didn't receive the kind of support I would have liked to have had. Hearing issues are still a huge stigma. It's the last area of musicians’ health that, I think, has not come out of the closet. Of course, hearing-loss drastically affects our playing, so it's really important from the outset that we're aware of the dangers and how to protect ourselves because orchestras are loud. Everything is loud nowadays and getting louder.

When I suffered my injury, we were playing a pop concert with Broadway singers. In-ear monitors hadn't been developed yet, so we had these big black beasts: monitors sitting on the edge of the stage, which projected the sound back onto the stage so that the singers, who were singing into microphones, could hear themselves. The singers danced and dashed across the stage, so we had eight enormous monitors lined up all the way across the stage. One was two feet away from me. I asked the stage managers to move it, but they said: ‘Oh, I don't know Janet, we'll try… there might be some feedback’. We had two and a half hours of rehearsal and then immediately played the concert. So there was very little time to be fooling around with setup or anything like that. I wore my earplugs. I thought I was protected. Should I have gotten up and left? In hindsight, yes. Did I think: ‘The show must go on!’ and ‘I'm protected, I have plugs in’, and ‘I'm principal cello, I can’t leave the stage’? Yes.

I sustained an acoustic shock injury that night. My left ear was blasted. It was incredibly painful, radiating down my neck into my teeth, tongue, jaw, my face, my head. I didn't know what happened. I just hoped it would go away by morning after a night of sleep. It didn't. From that day forward, I needed to wear a left earplug and I thought: I'm done. I mean, if people can hear it in my playing, I’m done. But what I know now, is that the brain can adjust to hearing with an earplug. I soon felt like I was hearing just as well with the left earplug in and people didn't notice a difference in my playing. Over time, relying so heavily on my right ear for everything, my right ear developed hyperacusis. It was so painful, I couldn't stand my own voice, I couldn't stand dishes clattering, children crying, beeps - even if they weren't loud, like microwave beeps. They're all high pitches, and it felt like a knife carving into my ear. And that's what people don't really know - hearing loss is a terrible thing, but it doesn't hurt, and hearing aids are getting better and better. They're very expensive, of course, but they're closer now to the sound of one’s normal hearing. The noise-induced injuries that can occur - like tinnitus and hyperacusis - make the activities of daily life impossibly difficult and troubling and painful, to the point where people want to end their lives. Hyperacusis sufferers yearn for silence and want to escape life totally. For me, going outside meant being constantly hyper-vigilant about lawnmowers and leaf blowers. Especially leaf blowers, I hate those. And fire trucks going by, trucks backing up, dogs barking, children giggling, grocery store scanners, any of those things. It was a terrible, terrible time and I was really depressed. I threw out all my black concert clothes. I’d never imagined that I would leave the orchestra under those circumstances. I simply disappeared without saying goodbye or getting a final bow or flowers, or any of those things that people receive when they retire. I thought I’ve lost my family. ‘the Minnesota Orchestra was my family’.

Courtesy of the Minnesota Orchestra

HO: I'm so sorry.

JH:  You know, I'm okay now. It's been over ten years now. But back then, I thought: ‘Who am I without the cello?’ and ‘How can I go on making a difference in the world, touching people in a creative way, which is what I have been used to all my life? How can I continue being an advocate? What am I going to do?’ Obviously, I needed to find something quiet to do. I had this story that had been churning around in my head. I decided to go back to school to get my Master of Fine Arts in creative writing.

For a couple of years, I had to live in total isolation. I couldn’t leave the house until I found a center that specialized in hyperacusis treatment. They had developed devices that allowed me to turn down sound and when combined with a brain retraining program, there was hope for improvement. I was very lucky. Initially, the team didn't tell me that the first year was going to be critical, they just told me: ‘Go very slowly and listen to a CD of pleasant sounds like rainfall, at first at extremely low volume levels and for very little time, gradually increasing the time before the volume.” For typical patients with hyperacusis, brain retraining can include very quiet soothing music. The point of the retraining program is to go about one’s activities with the sound in the background. But teaching a musician to ignore sound is very difficult. We're much more sound-oriented than non-musicians. So, I had to learn how not to listen, to trust, and to teach my brain that sound doesn't have to hurt. After the first year, there wasn't much improvement and the doctor said: ‘Well sorry, that's about as far as you’ll go’. But I'm very compliant, and very persistent, and I kept doing the program. I was determined to somehow be able to come back, at least to be able to play myself or with a small chamber ensemble, so I kept at it for another year and a half or so.

My husband and I decided for our 20th wedding anniversary we would take a trip to Europe and travel around. We were in Amsterdam for a few days. My very last orchestral concert of my life was at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. I said to my husband: ‘Howie, let's walk by it, you know, I'll probably cry, but let's walk by.’ And when we walked by I said: ‘Let's just see what's happening tonight’. The Berlin Philharmonic was playing Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, one of my favorite pieces performed by one of my favorite orchestras. ‘Howie, let's try going, and if we have to leave, we do,’ and we did attend the concert. During the performance, I thought: ‘Okay, I really want to hear this’. I had my earplugs in, as always, but I pulled them out, and I was fine! (Except for the applause and the hooting and hollering or bravo-ing at the end.) I was elated. The doctors hadn’t conducted enough research then to know if one could actually further stabilize hearing after the initial year following a trauma like I experienced, but I was able to. And I was able to play again even big quintets such as Elgar, Brahms, and Ernst Bloch’s first Piano Quintet- a fantastic work, oh it's a great piece.

HO: And back to the Bartók, didn’t Bartók receive the commission for the Concerto for Orchestra from Koussevitzky when he was in the hospital suffering from an unknown illness?

JH: Yes, he was very ill at the time and he was destitute. He had moved to the US to escape fascism. When Bartók came to the US he was barely making ends meet but he was too proud a man to accept charity. People didn't know who he was, so that commission saved him.

HO: Before ending the interview, I want to ask you about something else. You've been able to establish a very successful second career as a writer, which is a remarkable thing. Was there always a part of you that thought that you could pursue a career as a writer, or did this idea come to you later in life, the knowledge that you have talent and ability as a writer?

JH: Well, to be honest, some people might’ve thought ‘here’s this little old lady who suddenly thinks she can write’, when I applied for my Master's Degree. But I had written my injury prevention book by then. As a young person, I was always writing letters, and I wrote many articles about injury prevention well before I wrote my first book. Although I had no training at that point I still engaged in writing.  In high school, I had teachers who I'm still in touch with who thought I should be a writer, not a cellist, and I think back and find it interesting to think about how one makes choices. Did I become a cellist because I was fulfilling some dreams that my father was unable to attain? Maybe … maybe. Did I become a cellist because that's what my parents knew and wanted?  Maybe. My mother used to say: ‘Nobody could stop you, you were so ambitious and so persistent’. One doesn't know, but I do know that I needed the creative outlet that writing could offer. I knew I could do it. I wanted to improve my skills and have contact with other students and the support of teachers around me and I knew I needed to write this new book: The Cello Still Sings- A Generational Story of the Holocaust and of the Transformative Power of Music. It’s a great story, and I wanted my parents to live on in this way.

HO: I'm so grateful for all you've shared with me. Is there anything else you'd like to mention?

JH: People in the performing arts are worrying. I'm worrying too. About the future of our art and attending concerts. Going to the theater may be one of the last things that comes back after this horrible episode of COVID. Are we going to be able to start going to a concert hall? Will people feel comfortable being together in crowds? We don't know. Many colleagues are considering other professions right now. I have friends who've had to leave New York because they can't afford to live there if they have no income. We artists have to be entrepreneurial and self-reliant. There are some very interesting ideas coming from this time, too, of people driving a truck around, and performing truck concerts (like Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax), playing outdoor concerts, drive-in programs. People are doing so much online.

A Final Piece of Advice

A final piece of advice I’d like to offer: It's really important to have perspective, to realize when you're 18 (or any age for that matter), and you're in pain that it’s important to stop and take an extended break from playing if necessary.  It's hard to have the perspective, knowing that this is only a matter of a semester or a few months in order to ensure recovery and a whole lifetime of playing. It's so hard for young people to say: ‘Okay, I’ve got to stop, I’ve got to fix this’. They often feel: ‘I can't let my orchestra down’, or ‘I've got a jury I have to do’, or wherever it is. It’s important to know that waiting six months or a year is not the end of the world, but allowing something to plague you, like I did or you did, can mean the end of one’s career. And if it does come to the end, we have to realize that this is part of life. We have to take steps to adjust to the changes in our bodies. (I often give talks about the aging musician and what can happen in the body as we age). There are always ways to adjust, and if you're thinking and examining yourself throughout your life, you can sustain a very long career and not hurt yourself. But if the worst does happen, there are avenues for us. There are many people I know who have become physiotherapists, psychologists, career counselors, Pilates teachers. There's nothing like being on stage and making music. That's hard to replace. I had a great career. It’s not that I don’t dream about it, I do, and I still miss it. But there are other important and fulfilling things to accomplish in life, too.