#Death saved my life watch online series

But even in the hospital he kept playing. “I said to the doctors right away, ‘Look, I love playing the piano, I love being a musician, but I prefer to be alive,’ ” he told Bognár in his German-inflected English. When Vogt was first diagnosed with cancer, in 2021, he was told that the required chemotherapy treatments might interfere with his playing. “Even if he writes very joyful music, you know, then it’s in spite of the melancholy, but that’s the thing that from childhood was always very close to me, the dark harmonies that he often chooses.”

#Death saved my life watch online series

“With him I always felt a very close connection,” Vogt said of Brahms in an unforgettable final interview, with the pianist Zsolt Bognár, on an episode of the excellent series “Living the Classical Life.” There is a “slight melancholy that basically is always there” in Brahms, he continued.

(Only a dozen of his fifty-odd recordings were solo albums.) Though he played everything from Bach to Schoenberg and beyond, he was most closely linked to the music at the very heart of the Romantic piano repertoire, particularly the agonies and the ecstasies of Johannes Brahms. He was renowned as a chamber musician and accompanist and also celebrated as a soloist. Vogt was a musician of rigorous but unshowy virtuosity and distinctive intelligence, but also, and above all, a profound humanism and a deep moral and emotional imagination. at the Guelph Golf and Country Club.What do we lose when we lose a pianist? The question is on my mind today, the anniversary of the death of the German pianist and conductor Lars Vogt, who succumbed to esophageal cancer on September 5, 2022, just three days shy of his fifty-second birthday. 1, a fundraiser for the Kidney Foundation of Canada. The organization hopes to see 130,000 new donors sign on by next March.Īlong with family and friends, the couple have registered as a team for the Kidney Walk in Guelph on Oct. 'It was two months of me not feeling that well to save his life,' Smith said. “Us getting our story and message out there, that could convince just one person to change that checkbox on their health card or think about anonymous donation.'Īccording to beadonor.ca, about 1,400 Ontarians are currently waiting for an organ transplant and just over a quarter of people living in the province are registered as donors. 'We also understand that this is the type of story that can inspire people,” Doesrksen said. Now one year later, the couple is advocating for more people to become organ donors. 'Our support systems couldn't have been stronger and couldn't have been more in our corner for this for sure, we were very lucky to have this support network that we had,' the couple said. 'I wanted to make sure there was going to be some news to share and also that I took the appropriate time to really make this decision for myself as well,' Smith explained.Ĭontinuing with the tests until October of 2022, it was then that doctors informed Smith she was a match. 'Shortly after that, we started dating and really hit it off.'įaced with the grim reality, Smith immediately made the decision to undergo extensive medical testing to see if she could be a compatible donor.

He was on dialysis when he met Smith at a Halloween party in the fall of 2021.

'I was first hospitalized for symptoms that would eventually manifest as kidney failure, and then shortly thereafter I got the official diagnosis and then started dialysis August of that summer in 2021,' Doerksen explained.

Doerksen’s life took an unexpected turn when he was diagnosed with Kidney disease. 'I just knew I was like I know I am the person to do this for him.' 'We joke about how we pretty much were strangers at that point,' said 33-year-old Emma Smith. It was a life-saving match for Doerksen and life-changing decision for Smith, but she says she would do it all over again. 'It was, I mean it's still surreal to be honest,' said 33-year-old Doerksen. It was a match made in heaven that was approved by doctors. In November of 2022, Smith donated her kidney to her then new partner Ben Doerksen.