Mystery silent man a piano virtuoso
(article from ninemsn)
Mystery silent man a piano virtuoso
11:00 AEST Tue May 17 2005
LONDON – A British hospital has asked the public for help in determining the identity of a distressed man who has not uttered a word since being found on a beach over a month ago and who turns out to be a piano virtuoso.
Officials at the Medway Maritime Hospital said the man has not spoken since being found soaking wet on the beach of the southeastern Kent coastal town of Sheerness dressed in a chic black suit and tie.
After failing to elicit any details from the patient, who has shown signs of being nervous around strangers, hospital employees gave him pen and paper hoping he would write his name, but instead he drew a detailed sketch of a grand piano.
“When we took him to the chapel piano it really was amazing… he played for several hours, non-stop,” said Michael Camp, one of the social workers at the hospital.
“I am not knowledgeable about classical music but I could tell he was pretty good,” said Camp, who is based at the accident and emergency unit at Medway.
The hospital’s staff have taken to helping the man, quickly nicknamed “the piano man”, to compose as efforts continue to determine his identity.
A spokeswoman for the West Kent National Health Service Trust would not confirm reports that he has played sections of Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky, though she said he had staged a “beautiful” performance.
“There was nobody he was with skilled enough to recognise the music, they just knew it was classical music and played very well,” the spokeswoman said Monday.
“He’s not talking at all,” she said. “He’s very frightened. He’s drawing, but not to communicate. We are aware that he is a very vulnerable man and we would be putting him in a dangerous situation if we let him go.”
Interpreters from Poland, Latvia and Lithuania were brought in to see if he was from eastern Europe, and possibly an asylum seeker, but no one has been able to get him to talk.
The hospital made an appeal for help from the British public on Sunday through the national service for missing persons, and released a photo showing a tall, thin man in his 20s or early 30s, with closely-cropped blond hair and hunched shoulders.
“The Missing Persons Helpline has been inundated with calls. It’s a fantastic response,” Camp said later. “We have had one definite lead, but I haven’t had time to follow it up yet.”
The man is now being held in a secure mental health unit in north Kent, which has no piano, until a full assessment has been carried out.
“There is no doubt that this man is extremely distressed and depressed. He has started crying over the last week or so. It may be that some sort of trauma has made him like this,” Camp said.
“I cannot get within a yard of him without him becoming very anxious. Yet at the piano he comes alive. I can stand close to him and he is oblivious. It is extraordinary. The first time we took him down to the piano he played for several hours, non-stop.”
The case has drawn comparisons with the Oscar-winning 1996 movie “Shine”, which tells the story of acclaimed pianist David Helfgott who suffered a nervous breakdown while playing.
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