There is a lot of drunkenness in classical music--more than most piano teachers would care to think. My teenage four-hand students are working on the Rachmaninoff Waltz, from Opus 11. Its scenario is intoxication of two kinds: rhythmic and alcoholic. Playing and listening to it in this light changes drastically how one hears and comprehends what is and isn't happening: wrong notes composed into the piece, accents that do not jibe between the two parts, missing beats and downbeats, slowings down and speedings up, spinning lines that go on and on for indeterminate amounts of time... it has "out of control" written all over it.

Two extraordinary lessons in rhythm yesterday: one a teenager just learning her way around Beethoven. We started with the definition of Allegretto in 3/4. It cannot mean a straightforward quarter note beat because I believe that "-etto" implies an eighth-note pulse. Are there any eighth notes? Sure enough they were all over the place but hidden, as it were, in dotted quarter notes (what is a dotted quarter if not a 3/8 value?.

She sightread the movement as an eighth-note piece rather than the plodding 3/4 piece I have always heard and played myself when her age. The result was a fascinating reading of a piece that otherwise can feel quite pedestrian.

Later came a mature woman, very experienced pianist but not a good sight reader, with a Brahms Intermezzo in 6/8. What do you know about 6/8? Two strong beats to the bar. Really?

It turned out not that simple. Her delight was boundless.

Again, it is a piece I had always heard and played myself (or attempted to play) in a conventional 6/8 meter.

The point is that "'taint simple, McGee!"

Overtones. That's what happened when the piano was invented. Overtones became the subject of the music and the content of the sound, not discrete notes or harmonies. That's why there are so many broken "chords" in the left hand: the harmonic context shifts gradually as overtones compound upon already sounding mixes of sound. That's why the "bass" notes in a broken chord are not to be sustained and why they do not indicate full change of pedal: they are specifically crafted to carry over and blend with an already sounding constellation of vibrations. Visual analysis often obscures this essential auditory observation.

In much piano music one cannot--must not--separate functions in the Baroque manner of bass, melody and chord. Doesn't work.

Details, details. As important as it is to get the general idea of a piece of music it is the details that stick in one's craw. They certainly bothered me as a youngster, particularly those pesky chromatic alterations Mozart inserted in all the wrong places. I disliked them to the point of "correcting" them. No one stopped me, so what difference could it possibly make?

I notice when a student trips over details because it shows that the student is reacting to their specificity. This often means that I have to make the effort to go into the probable cause for these improbable musical events. I have benefited greatly from this effort and so has Rachmaninoff, the composer du jour.

Today I remember the remark of a young girl who had played a wrong note: "But the note didn't want to go up!" Labelled by everyone but me a poor reader she did not last long in my tutelage: her parents were determined that she remain a poor reader. I feel that she was really ahead of the game in that she showed comprehension. If that isn't the point of reading, what is?

I recall also moments in which I heard distinctly certain tonal events that surprised me by making it impossible for me simply to play the notes in front of me. When I have gone back to find the passages they have vanished. It is as though I read theoretically and listen acoustically and the two simply do not line up.

Intensity is something that cannot be pasted onto music, either in composition or in performance. Phony baloney is not hard to spot. (Real baloney--Liberace, for instance--is altogether different: my sophisticated piano teacher from Prague admired his pianism and could laugh more easily than I could when it turned into schlock.)

Many library copies of chamber works at Mannes where I have taught for over 30 years, used to be marked with pencil: "More! More!" What did those coaches want if not pasted on intensity? I would have marked: "Less! Less!" which is to say, do less and listen harder. The tones themselves, if composed with real intensity (a fair enough assumption when the composer is Beethoven or Mozart) inform all the passion required.

Usually people don't think of Rachmaninoff as an ironic composer, but the Waltz my students are playing, piano four hands, is definitely ironic. Purposeful wrong notes, hiccuping rhythms, it can't be serious. Maybe the trouble is that we tend to take music seriously just because it is written down. Then it comes as such a shock when someone brings it to life and we realize that it is amusing.