To Play Again

Book excerpt: At age twenty-one, while she was working with the legendary Nadia Boulanger in France, concert pianist Carol Rosenberger was stricken with paralytic polio—a condition that knocked out the very muscles she needed in order to play. But Rosenberger refused to give up. Over the next ten years, against all medical advice, she struggled to rebuild her technique and regain her life as a musician—and went on to not only play again, but to receive critical acclaim for her performances and recordings. Beautifully written and deeply inspiring, To Play Again is Rosenberger’s chronicle of making possible the seemingly impossible: overcoming career-ending hardships to perform again.