Yesterday I heard an eminent theorist/musicologist present two versions of a Beethoven Sonata for Piano and Cello, Op. 69. It was a fascinating presentation which featured performances of both versions of the piece by a highly competent student duo. I had to leave before the conclusion of the presentation, but heard enough to realize that the scholar, himself a cellist who has played the piece many times, got it backwards: It is an accompanied sonata, but it is the cello that is accompanying the piano, not the other way around. The duo who played definitely had been advised to keep the cello on top, so to speak, and the piano took a receding role. This is entirely wrong as it skirts all the critical issues raised by the composition: why it contrasts A major, a fine cello key, with F# minor, a lousy cello key but a fascinating piano key.

The piano was a knockout invention. Its sound, then as now, is unfathomably rich, particularly in the black key department. Beethoven was totally fascinated with the sound of black keys in contrast to white. How do I know? Look at the key signatures of Op. 2: No. 1-- four flats; No. 2 -- three sharps; No. 3 -- none of either. This pattern repeats throughout his life. Can it be accidental, then, that he regards this as subject matter?

Questions of intonation are among the most difficult to address. It is as if string players, already facing intonation challenges when playing together, cannot imagine that the difficulties they have playing in tune with winds or with the piano might signal details of passionate importance in the composer's mind.

Yesterday I had a remarkable conversation with an eminent bassoonist who told me about specific difficult-to-manage pitches on the bassoon. I was astounded, having played often with bassoon, one of my favorite duo instruments. How differently I would listen knowing what I now know! I should think such information would be critical to an understanding of specific sounds in all music.

Now that everything is equally accessible at the push of a button we risk losing the sense of the difference between the intimate musical gesture and the public musical event. Some genres are made for household enjoyment while others are clearly intended for public spectacle or mass participation.

Some of the most intimate music was written for duets, particularly piano four-hands. This was meant to be played after a good dinner, with and for friends, probably after a glass or three of good wine and other spirits. A fair amount of this music is downright inebriated. (Schubert's Notre Amitie est Invariable is certainly in that category--even the title is over the top.)

Children taking piano lessons are rarely let into the secret. It makes all the difference in the world, as the emotions accompanying wrong notes are critical in making the distinction between public and private. If public, a wrong note is embarrassing at least. If private, the same wrong note may be endearing.

Perhaps this is why so many pianists really hate to play four-hand music.

I note with some amusement how different it is to train young people to be discerning amateurs than to be pretend professionals. Perfectionism is a dead-end street when it comes to music; pretend perfectionism is even deader. All too often pretense to perfection is the disease of professionalism.

A discerning amateurs is like the five-year-old who, when listening to Don Quixote read to him, burst out laughing at the second instance of Sancho Panza uttering his inimitable words of wisdom: "I know what he's going to say!" and then proceeded to get it.

Imagine someone putting a period at the end of every line in an Emily Dickinson poem.

Today someone brought in an edition of Brahms works for piano in which Emil Sauer had done the equivalent, adding slurs that entirely change the texture and implications of the piece.

It reminded me that as a teenager I was given that edition. I decided that Brhams was an inferior composer. One look at the Authentic edition (very inexpensive, published by Kalmus) in which there are almost no markings, assured me that the opposite is true.

Try fooling around with the punctuation in a poem you know and love, then compare the Sauer edition of Brahms to the Authentic and see for yourself.

Working on the Rachmaninoff Waltz from Opus 11 with two fully aware, intelligent young people has been a real eye-opener for me. Until working with these two, I always approached four-hand music from the standpoint of getting it right at all costs. Here, however, is a piece that is crafted with wrong notes that exude inebriation. It literally reels, gets blurred vision, misses the correct note again and again. The fine ears of these young people make it clear to me that this ultra sophisticated aspect of the piece is very subtly composed into it. Ironically, it is an aspect of music that cannot really be written down--it simply must be heard. How do I know that they hear it? Because they trip over its illogical passages. Listening to their errors has revealed the piece to me.

My respect for Rachmaninoff has grown enormously. So has my respect for these students and for the uniquely difficult challenge of reading aspects of music that defy notation.

Formulas are OK as far as they go, but in music they often go nowhere. Take, for example, time signatures. These are not formulas, contrary to what you were told when you were ten or eleven. Every time signature needs to be interpreted in conjunction with a tempo marking, prevailing note values, and other small details.

It is amazing how simplistic we learn to be when the opposite is called for in so many cases. As a result the music seems to be leaden, boring.

Just last week I had two examples of time signatures that were entirely the opposite of what I used to think they were. Now that I finally know how to read....

It takes a while.

That is the point.