I teach a young woman who has no natural "talent" for the piano: she has no natural feel for rhythm and she has trouble singing on pitch. Yet her ear is so sensitive that today, after playing the first note of her Clementi sonatina, she stopped. "It sounds strange."
The piano had been tuned since last she played it. And it does sound completely different to someone with a fine sense of hearing, which she has.
She struggles through the Clementi (she doesn't yet own a piano, having just moved out of her parental home) which she reads at her lessons only. But the finesse of her responses to every detail is a joy to behold, both to watch and to hear. I much prefer attending to her ultra-sensitivity rather than listen to quantities of notes fly past without internal involvement.
