A provincial pianist, part 1

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?
—Robert Browning 

One thing I’m coming/not coming to terms with in this project is how I compare to other pianists. I’ve figured out I’m not Horowitz. But when I prepare a piece in the standard repertoire I listen to him—and to all the best pianists of the last 100 years, so easy now thanks to YouTube. And of course I compare my playing to theirs. 

This is not a bad thing. It’s 90% constructive comparison: What are they doing? How are they doing it? I didn’t know you could do that!

(Then I’ll come across a performance by some recent conservatory graduate with great promise but no big name, and I’m not even in that league.)

I’m getting better, too, from my practice, from all this listening, and from learning more music (50% of it Scarlatti) more quickly than I have in decades. But I’m also aware that I don’t, and may never, have the pianistic prowess of my YouTube models. 

People tell me after my concerts that what they heard might have been anywhere. It was amazing! We could have been in Carnegie Hall! And maybe I believe that of my best moments. I know musicality has multiple facets, and I may be phenomenally wonderful at specific kinds of things or particular pieces. But I don’t believe I’m competitive in an all-around way with what I think of as “real concert pianists”, as flattering as it is to hear people say otherwise. 

I was expressing these thoughts to my son. He said “Isn’t that one of the main points of your project? That you, that this, is good enough?”

He’s right. But I seem to want it both ways: I want to celebrate being a country pianist, fulfilling a Vermont need without me or anyone having to hop on an airplane—but I want to do so as if I’d been dropped here by accident instead of at the Wigmore Hall or Musikverein.