Please read Mr. Cosmo’s essay on Fanny Mendelssohn first.

How would you feel if you thought that after all your years of study and hard work no one would ever hear you play?  Ever.

Imagine yourself locked in a beautiful house with nothing but your piano scores and a big beautiful grand piano. You could play and study all day long. There was wonderful food to eat, loads of sunshine, and total comfort, but the only thing that would be missing, always, was an audience.  How would that make you feel?

Here is The Lightbulb Moment for this week. In order for you to be a truly great artist it is not enough for other people to say you are great. To praise your talent and to tell you that you are wonderful. 

Instead, you have to continuously have the feeling that there might be still more you can give to your work. That there is some small bit of territory in your mind and heart you have yet to explore such that once you have discovered it, it will take your work to a new level, allowing you to realize that you have more to give and to say through your music than even you thought possible.

No matter how long you live, no matter how hard you work, no matter how much repertoire you learn, you must never be fully satisfied with what you have done. Your greatest performance should never leave you fully satisfied with yourself, as if you have no more to give. Even if you leave the stage absolutely knowing you did the best job possible in the moment, the question must always be “How can I do even better the next time?”

Fanny Mendelssohn was a woman of great talent, as all of her compositions will attest. At the same time, the era in which she grew up was not kind to female composers, so much so that if she wanted her works to be heard, she had to pretend that it was her brother Felix who had written them.

Still, that did not keep her from composing.

Don’t let the praise of other people be your reason for practicing and performing. Instead, talk to the piano keys.  Listen to what they have to say to you. And make sure that every day, every hour, you are responding with the best you have to give.  

That best will expand as you get older, as your skills become greater, and as you understand yourself more. Still, to be a truly great artist is to be like the traveler who, upon reaching one destination, immediately sets her sights on the next one. The joy must not be in winning the race, but running it.

Your talent is like a tree that continues to get taller, adding leaves and branches year after year. How tall will it become? You will only know by making sure it keeps growing.