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.