Looking forward to interviewing a young pianist, I think the most important thing I need to know is if I can tell what he loves best in the music he will play for me. The question binds player and listener in a fascinating game that requires total attention. What could be better?

In researching Mozart's writing for the natural horn I am finding out how much he wrote for particular players, not at all in the abstract. And we are, two hundred years later, stuck with the abstract. No wonder it all sounds the same.

I have a potted plant purchased maybe thirty years ago for $1.25 at the local Woolworth's (remember them?). It is a palm tree with a little mop of fronds atop a spindly trunk. Being a somewhat haphazard potted-garden tender, as opposed to a somewhat potted garden tender, for one reason or another I had placed the pot at an angle atop a bed of pebbles. Thus, the trunk grew at an angle. As this bothered me I periodically shifted the pot. Between this shiftiness and the fact that the sun reaches it at yet another angle, the tree took on a look so bizarre that I resolved to dispose of what had become an embarrassing eyesore.

Then came the sprout. High up on the trunk a new bunch of fronds was shooting out at another angle. "New life," thought I. "Wait and see what happens."

What has happened is a major miracle. A whole new tree has sprouted from the base of the trunk, this one with fronds the length of the trunk, not concentrated at the top. The new tree is already about 3 feet high--a symbol of a newer, fuller second life. A symbol, too, of how the offspring may surpass the parent.

Somewhere along the line people got the idea that children's perceptions need to be organized for them--I mean really organized, as in regimented.

Being a dutiful sort of child I bought into that way of thinking not realizing that most of the adults who were imposing it upon my youthful mind had nowhere near as intense perceptions as I did. They were certainly well-meaning but they were actually holding me back. It was only as a young adult that I quite accidentally encountered people who helped me develop self-confidence in this critical area of development.

Competition is in some ways good. But as a goal in education it is definitely anti-progress. We live in a changing world, heaven knows. A child raised to compete is being subjected to today's standards. What will things be like twenty years from now? What will that young adult's options actually be? Who can know?

The article in today's New York Times about people keeping their children back from kindergarten for a year so that they will have the advantage over their "peers" when they hit high school is a sign of this kind of thinking.

I take it as unmistakable evidence that people need to be and feel in tune that the equally-tempered piano has fallen to one side while really tunable instruments, like the guitar and unaccompanied voices have come into increasing favor with people, especially young people.

I am completely in love with the complex, untamed sound of the modern grand piano. I am fascinated by its variables and by the music written to celebrate this range of auditory invention.

At the same time I have a need to experience being in tune, really in tune. Thus I sing a cappella on a regular basis and enjoy the best of both possible worlds.

One of my most meaningful rewards as a teacher of young people is when one of them pinpoints an area of weakness in their playing--a technique they would like to work on or some level of musical involvement that needs development.

Today such a moment came from a young girl who plays third base on her school softball team. What she needs in order to play better in time is to transfer to the piano the same skill she must use on the field, i.e., to anticipate where the ball is going to go whether to the right or the left of the base line. It is quite analogous to being ahead of or behind the beat: Once you get behind one beat without being aware of it you may be sure the next beat will be even later, and so on.

It was great to see her face light up as she got the point and could feel her concentration beginning to address the problem.

Incidentally, it is one thing to address specific problems that apply to all music and quite another to focus on mastering individual pieces, which are always an amalgam of complex situations. Addressing specific problems enables her to play better whatever particular pieces she wants to play on a given day.