It is paradoxical that putting one's whole self into music-making makes the result more universal. No matter how stylistically correct, by-the-book performance limits access to the initiated. However correct or incorrect I am engaged in the performance when I sense that the performer has her heart in it, right this minute.

This is what makes reading music so profoundly difficult. When do we become confident that we have reached that level of recognition through the medium of printed music? For me it has taken a lifetime, especially in regard to Mozart, the composer with whom I first felt rapport on a one-sound-at-a-time basis. Pretty direct.

Perhaps the emphasis on polite, middling responses comes from a simplistic notion of "music."

Thinking some more about how closely aversion is linked to its opposite and reminded once more of my wildly divergent reactions to sounds in Mozart--sometimes within a single phrase--I am mindful of the extent to which our training seems to favor polite responses. Nothing too out of the way, please.

Researching on-line I find not one single newspaper review of the two splendid, indeed life changing concerts I heard last weekend. It must be that the press is afraid of challenges, which is somewhat understandable in that I, too, had misgivings about two evenings in a row devoted to music by a composer I have never found palatable.

Yet it was a recognized master pianist performing.

A bit more probing revealed an interview with Anderszewski about how he got involved with Symanowski. It was a powerful aversion to the music that drew him in. Perhaps because, being half Polish, a sense of responsibility to the culture of his country compelled him to pursue this aversion to a point where the music came alive.

I have always been struck by the power of aversion which I first felt within a single work by Mozart -- all the more startling because of the intense love surrounding it.

Is there a place in our culture for secrets? Now that everyone knows everything about everyone else what will happen to meaning? Can children tell the difference between something that has meaning to them and something that does not?

I will never forget the wisdom of a ten-year-old when asked "When do you play loud?"

"When it's important."

"And when do you play soft?"

After some thought, "When it's important."

I suspect that some children do not play the piano at home because they need music to support their secret life.

This morning's New York Times has an obituary article on Dr. Stanley Greenspan who developed a way to deal with atypical young learners: get down on the floor and reach them at the level of their eyes. The technique is called " doing floor time." It is very like what I do with my young students. I get my ear to be in sync with what they are hearing rather than pretend that they have any way of hearing as I hear. Once this fundamental musical contact has been established they learn with remarkable finesse.

It takes a while to establish this contact as most of their school learning is based on the opposite dynamic in which the teacher essentially demands "Do as I do; see as I see." Self-confidence grows from the child knowing that their field of perception is reliable and that it is communicable. Someone is paying attention and willing to engage them in an exchange at a level that is real to them.

Doesn't it seem obvious when you think about it?

I use a similar technique teaching adults to sing in tune. First get your face to reflect your intention to sing a certain vowel and indicate to everyone with whom you are singing that you share this intention with them. Chances are that when you all actually produce the tone it will be in tune. Surprisingly it works with adults just as it does with newborns.

Sometimes I get the feeling that we are not prepared to believe that children are as likely to have something to say in tone as they are in words. Words and other pre-codified objects demand less of the listener than do sounds in their larger, unrestricted domain. But this larger, unrestricted domain clearly exists.

It is to this realm that Szymanowski's music refers--and Janacek's. Also Bartok, Schumann, Chopin...the list goes on.

By overly restricting our notions of what music refers to we have made it harder to receive uncodified messages except, perhaps, through the medium of instrumental virtuosity. By the time most young pianists have leaped through those hoops of pretend-fire all that usually remains is code without access to content, which then has to be pasted on.

I have been moved to notice the depth of the music native to my young students.