Anderszewski came to town and played / conducted two Mozart Piano Concerto's with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, natural horns and all. I was overwhelmed, as were my companions, by the range of his emotion and his power, both loud and supremely soft.

Too often, I feel, Mozart is played as though there is a correct way to perform it, i.e., without flesh and blood. I find this unbearable; therefore do not attend many Mozart performances. The extremes are there, especially in the D minor Concerto, which Anderszewski played yesterday. The piano that he played is modern; he is modern; the music, being timeless, can take it when updated by such a fearless, honest musician.

Another example of how profoundly classical composers think in related tonalities: Preparing a Player's Guide to Mozart's monumental Piano Quartet in G minor, K. 478 (due out next year) I have studied all his works in that key, and in G major, the key of the Mozart Piano Sonata, K. 283 that so troubled me when a child, and which gave rise to my visualization technique, Tonal Refraction. Yesterday I discovered that just before writing K. 478 he wrote three songs, K. 472-4, in the keys respectively of G minor, B-flat major and G major, the same sequence of keys as the three movements of K. 478. Then there is my favorite Mozart song, Das Veilchen, K. 476 which, despite its brevity, is in three keys: G major, minor and E-flat for a slight change.

The discovery elates me.

What could be better than being sixteen or twenty-one, playing great music and being totally aware, totally in command of what you are hearing so that you are free to respond to it as you play? That's not the way I recall playing at sixteen or twenty-one.

For me at that age it was a matter of going over what I knew, of repetition, not of discovery.

What gives these young students freedom to respond is that they were never led to believe that music is static, that it can or should be reliably repeated. OK, that's a luxury. But life, too, is a luxury.

Today I am thinking about the contrast between two concerts I heard recently. In one, listening was the subject--active, attentive, spellbound listening, backed up by all kinds of skill: in the composition and in the performance. Mysterious, challenging, cathartic.

In the second, where I had anticipated warmth and sensuality since I was familiar with the music, authenticity seemed rather to be the subject: historical, theoretical, literary authenticity.

The first took me by surprise: works by a living composer, 39 years old: Matthias Pintscher, completely new to me. Give him a listen whenever you get the chance.

I now have a pdf file of the Chamber Music Magazine article in case you are interested. Send me an email: nancygarniez@tonalrefraction.com and I will gladly send you a copy.

One person responding commented on the courage that it takes for amateurs who know that their "bodies" are imperfect to get up and play together with others. I should say so! But I don't think of it as their "bodies" but rather what my teacher used to call their "equipment," i.e., their technique, their chops.

In my experience persons with less than perfect bodies often play and sing most beautifully. Have you heard Thomas Quasthof?

As many of you know from seeing my work I am fascinated by the connections between visual and auditory experience, most specifically on the interchange between them, or the lack thereof.

My friend who specializes in Greek culture as perceived in 18th-century England (how's that for specificity!) tells me that the Greek language was at its most highly inflected with specific endings when it was newborn. With usage it eroded, becoming gradually less refined.

Imagine if music notation had had a similar history, moving from visualizations of vibrations to the rather coarse system we use today.

This day is special: My article Experiments of a Chamber Music Coach on the program I inaugurated at Mannes in 1975 and coordinated until 2007 is in the Nov/Dec. issue of Chamber Music, the magazine of Chamber Music America. In it I describe the program's philosophy and structure -- my methods which were kept under-the-radar for more than 30 years.

The germ of it all is hidden away 5 paragraphs from the end: "It became increasingly clear that the students who trusted their own ears played with greater confidence and satisfaction. There was no way any of them (or us coaches) could play like the Amadeus Quartet: not many Americans equate music with survival, though I know that persons with disability or chronic illness often do." The program would never have happened if my own disability and chronic illness had not precluded a professional performing career.

I do equate music with health and joy, both synonyms for survival.