Listening to some virtuoso musicians is like watching the 6:40 express to Boston whiz past with passengers and crew on board, but definitely not you.
Do we compromise the music by considering the listener? From the remarkable insights I derive from listeners I think it is the other way around. Listener feedback has brought about new levels of study and unveiled factors I would never have thought of connecting.
For one thing, the music we play was written in some kind of cultural context with which we are unfamiliar and about which we can only guess. Locating that music with our own cultural context is a task that has to include the listener since we don't make up a culture all by ourselves.
As it is there is too much of a pianists' culture, rather than a musical one.
