Go Ahead: Stick Your Neck Out

If classical music is to have a chance of survival in this over-controlled tech world players simply must learn to dare the forbidden.  When is that going to happen if not when the player is young?

Too often teachers take it as their duty to produce students who clone mature performances rather than to nurture confidence in their students' distinctive voices .

Recently I put out the question on an Internet chat list: What piano performances had most affected you?  Only one response cited a live performance; all the others were recordings.

I know that my CDs, which are entirely unedited and which do contain flaws, have alienated some people.  Others have said that they realize there must be mistakes on the CD but that they do not hear them.

One of the latter was a quite rigid musician with whom I used to perform. 

Hmmm.