A development in modern composition pairs the piano with percussion: perhaps it was Bartok who started the imagination moving in that direction with his Music for Two Pianos and Percussion. How different from the early days of the piano when the fascination was with the piano as a stringed instrument, capable of many acoustical effects in common with stringed instruments, therefore compatible with them in duos, trios, quartets and so on.

As concert halls grew the sound of the piano became more and more steely--more percussive. The sustaining, shimmering, accepting acoustics of the instrument were no longer audible, except close up. And how many public events took place in small rooms? Everyone knows that is not cost-effective.

So the percussionists moved to front and center and it is their sounds that pianists match, even when playing solo.

Please don't misunderstand me. One of my dreams since childhood is to live in a home with one entire room filled with gongs, drums, bells, triangles -- the whole nine yards. I love percussion and greatly admire the increasingly subtle musicianship of percussionists.

But even more than percussion itself I love the piano's versatility and bemoan its loss. Why can't one learn to play this amazing instrument both ways?

Within the past two days there have been references in the New York Times to the fear-filled experience of youthful music study. One appeared in the obituary of a prominent cellist who, realizing that his young students were in tears but not learning anything, decided to "lighten up." The other was in a reader-submitted tribute to a recently deceased high school orchestra teacher.

What was striking about the first was that the teacher recognized in the distress of his young students the need to change his tone. In the other piece I was struck by the fact that the writer had not touched her viola in so long that her teenage children didn't even know she had one. Her connection to the teacher was real, but her connection to music had remained frozen.

She describes a reunion concert in which all the warm human interaction accessible through music is evoked, albeit through the misty veil of sentimentality. People get nostalgic even for the experience of being mocked and belittled, which she recalls vividly as part of the orchestra experience.

Had it been otherwise the viola would not have been untouched for so many years.

It occurs to me that fear-filled is dreadful.

Playing for an audience intensifies everyone's listening, especially the performer's. It can be unnerving to realize, even while playing, that one is hearing things with new intensity. That accounts for much of what we call stage fright.

How refreshing, in contrast, to hear young people perform whose training is based on the immediacy of their ear. The attentiveness of the audience seems to reinforce confidence in their hearing so that nothing rattles them.

My class of young students had a playing party this afternoon in which that was once again demonstrated.

Bravo to their parents for taking the long view of what music means.

There is no real right way to listen to music, anymore than to engage in any other human activity. This is the problem with courses in Music Appreciation which often give the impression that music is made up of distinct themes and procedures (e.g., fugue and sonata form) and that a respectable listener should be able to track these things.

A high school student once confided to me that in order to pass his Music Appreciation course he had to differentiate two themes in a composition though it was clear to him that one was a variant of the "other."

I have a good friend who has the ability to identify sounds as they flit past, including a vivid awareness of harmonies and overtones. It is a skill I do not possess and do not envy. I much prefer letting my being be carried by music wherever it leads me--sometimes the most familiar music leading to the most unexpected experience.

If a piece of music does not hold my undivided attention either the composer or the performer has not done their job.

The more I teach, the more I play, the more I listen, the deeper my conviction that music unfolds one tone at a time and that if we are engaged in the first sound, whatever it is, we will follow wherever it leads.

When a piano piece is announced as in a certain key almost everyone who has ever played the piano will have an immediate reaction, whether conscious or not. For example, yesterday I asked a young student (16) which white key was most problematic on the piano. I was surprised at her reply: C.

C is for her uneventful, which causes her problems. I recall having the same reaction when I was her age. (One adult student has labeled that key "ploddy.")

The question, then, is why so much has been written in that key by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, not so much Schubert and even less Chopin.

Partly for this reason it is not always appropriate to indicate what key a piece is in: the Chopin Mazurkas and many cycles of Brahms Intermezzi, for example, float in and out of keys in thrilling sequence quite outside the logic of traditional theory.

We listeners should have the option of floating. Maybe that is what the key of C invites and what we find so difficult.

So much of European music works because it engages the listener/player in a push/pull conflict: "I want to hold this sound," the unspoken wish of the player, directly conflicts with the composer's indication that it be released and in a certain specified manner.

Last night I heard a recital of songs by various 19th and 20th century French and German composers. Conflict is at the heart of the accompanied song literature. If the pianist follows the singer there is no drama; they must resist one another. If "I want to move ahead" is the desire impelling the vocal line, the pianist must assert "I will not let you move without resistance."

If I pay money, even a lot of money, for a concert ticket and go home with a single sound that haunts me, wakes me in the night, and follows me around for days, I consider the concert a huge success.

The two young people playing Stravinsky yesterday made such a sound. They did it not once but twice--proof, I believe, that they really meant it. No one could have instructed them how to play that sound that way. It was the approach, the touch, the blend, the timing--every element of it was unforgettable. It woke me in the night and it is following me around today. And that was "just" a piano lesson.

How did they manage to do it? Each of them has been studying with me for years learning the aspects of music that "take too long," namely, sounds and the effect of sounds on the player and on the listener--me. When the sounds are the composition they move the player literally. They become the motivation behind the touch not as the result of any "interpretation" or "emotion," but because the sound is alive like an animal that invites physical contact of a very specific nature. Such responses are not abstractions and cannot be generalized much less verbalized. No wonder that when they occur they are unforgettable.