‘I thought I’d never play again’ – pianist rebuilds career after catastrophic hand injury

11 November 2025, 14:48 | Updated: 11 November 2025, 16:07

A pianist who lost his finger after a circular saw fell on him has returned to the stage.

For months after a devastating DIY accident in January 2023, concert pianist Stephen Raine, 33, from Buckinghamshire, believed his piano playing was over for good.

But less than two years later, he is back performing, in a remarkable story of recovery.

Raine, a London College of Music graduate, was finishing some DIY at home when his circular saw caught on wood and swung across his right hand. “I looked down to see all four fingers severed, attached by just a few millimetres of skin,” he writes on his website. “My little finger was fully detached on the floor.”

“When it happened I instantly thought I would never be able to use my hand again,” Raine says, “It was a shocking sight and I knew it would be life changing.”

He was rushed to Wexham Park Hospital, where surgeons managed to save three of his fingers, although his little finger had to be amputated several days later.

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Raine faced not only physical pain but also the emotional shock of losing his ability to perform. Music had been part of his life since the age of six and his identity was bound up in being a pianist.

Raine’s rehab began under occupational therapist Gaby Willis at Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust. Recognising the demands of his profession, Willis looked for approaches that could give him a chance to play again.

She used a pioneering US technique known as CMMS (casting motion to mobilise stiff joints). The method involves repeated plaster casts to isolate and strengthen specific stiff joints while encouraging the remodelling of scar tissue.

Willis’ connection to Raine’s case was personal. Her late mother, pianist Sheila Ackerman, had once held a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music and performed at Wigmore Hall. “Helping Stephen was like continuing something that had begun with my mother,” Willis, an amateur pianist herself, says.

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Stephen Raine performs a recital at Chelmsford Cathedral

Naturally, after the accident Raine encountered a range of emotions. “I felt grief for the loss of a finger and function of my hand and the loss of all of my repertoire and years of work, along with huge gratitude for my other fingers being saved at the same time,” he says, “It felt like a large part of my expressive identity had been removed from me, but knowing how lucky I had been and seeing the small daily progress at the piano really helped me to remain positive.”

Through months of determination, daily therapy sessions lasting up to six hours and several follow-up surgeries, Raine gradually regained movement and strength, learning new finger patterns for pieces to account for the loss of his little finger. And just 18 months after the accident, he performed a full recital at Chelmsford Cathedral.

“It was a blessing to be able to have a therapist who also understands music and could guide my recovery to a musical point of view, as well as a medical one,” says Raine, “for example spanning the hand for chords exercises, independence of the fingers for playing thirds and dexterity exercises.”

Raine is now back to teaching and performing but he says he’s a different person. “At first, I thought recovery meant getting back to where I was before,” he says, “But since returning to performing concerts, I’ve learned it’s not about going back at all. It’s about how we create something new from what’s left. We don’t choose what breaks us, but we do choose what we create from the pieces.”