Sao Paulo: Days before Christmas, acclaimed pianist Joao Carlos Martins ran to a Sao Paulo bar to show off his new gloves to friends. They were seemingly magical, enabling the 79-year-old to play songs with both hands for the first time in 21 years.

It sounds too good to be true, but the proof is in the playing. Sitting at his Petrof piano in his penthouse, Martins reels off Frederic Chopin's nocturnes with aplomb. Before the gloves, he could only play songs slowly with his thumbs and, sometimes, his index fingers.

Joao Carlos Martins' new gloves have allowed the pianist to come out of retirement. Credit:AP

The Brazilian classical pianist and conductor, one of the great interpreters of Johann Sebastian Bach's music, announced his retirement last March after more than 20 surgeries - on his arms, fingers and brain - to stop pains from a degenerative disease and a series of accidents. Limited hand movement left him working mostly as a conductor since the early 2000s.

"After I lost my tools, my hands, and couldn't play the piano, it was as if there was a corpse inside my chest," Martins said.