Watching the piano finals of the Young Musician of the Year competition last night I was just wondering at what stage one masters the technical side of playing an instrument and then it comes down more to the way you perform it. The judge said something along the lines of that for the competitors, technical brilliance was a given so when judging it came down to the way they conveyed their playing to the audience.

What I mean is do all musicians who are learning at a high level reach the same standards technically in the end or do some still have a far superior technical ability than others and does it make a difference or do you just choose pieces to play that you are comfortable with technically? It is obvious of course in children that you can see one is technically superior to another of the same age but does this still apply at the top level such as the performers from last night?

Does this make sense?

Technique never becomes a given, in that however good someone becomes, there are always going to be issues that they need to work on, develop and improve. If anything, the better one becomes, the more one works on maintaining and building technique.

There are certain minimum levels of technique in any instrument that any proficient performer must have - for example a violinist who hasn't mastered vibrato is never going to get very far even if they choose to specialise in early music.

Yes, different works in any instrument's repertoire will suit different performers, and at the highest levels the performers will tend to work in areas where their strengths lie.

Performance skill is not the same as technique. To get the musical message over to an audience, one needs both, as well as a good understanding of what the work is about.

I think she meant that to reach the keyboard final each player would have had to have real mastery of the technique needed for the pieces in their programme. This is a far cry from saying that at 13 anyone could have mastery of every technique on piano.

Choice of repertoire is an important part of the Young Musician competition, and I think one of the reasons that Lara won was that she had mastered more technique than some of the others - or, at least, chose a programme which demonstrated more technique.

So I think I'm saying that you choose pieces to play that you are comfortable with technically. This applies at all levels, and even the best concert pianists tend to specialise in certain composers whose music they feel most comfortable with. Of course, the challenge is to increase the range of pieces you do feel comfortable with technically!

The AB 'Music Exams' publication seems to suggest that around Grade 5/6+ the examiners expect the pieces to be technically perfect, and that the marks are awarded on basis of performance. I'm not sure if that's the correct way of reading into their statements though.

They would have been decidedly disappointed in my exam then!

Surely technique never becomes a given - if you compare the Young Musicians to a concert pianist there's probably a gap, and if you compare most concert pianists to Yundi Li you'll notice that they have areas they can improve. However good your technique is, you'll always want to make it better.

I've not found that to be the case at all. It certainly wasn't for either of my own distinctions at Grade 8. I think it's more that correct notes in correct places ALONE will not obtain the pass mark. And even that is far from technical perfection, just accurate score-reading. The examiners are looking for a musical performance, and blemishes and technical difficulties detract from that.

This is undoubtedly true, but there is a little more to it ...

... I tend to be most comfortable technically with the pieces that I like the best, irrespective of how difficult they might seem to some objective assessment of "technical difficulty" ... and that is because I am motivated to work hard to master them, and to repeat them endlessly to get them right, and never get tired of them.

... on the other hand there are plenty of apparently easier pieces that I don't feel comfortable with technically, and probably never will, because I just don't like them enough to study them enough and repeat them enough to get that intimate fluency and near-total security that is needed for a good performance.

I suspect this is true of just about everyone.

I think katyjay summed it up very pithily.

Yes and I think that explains why exam pieces at a given grade often seem to the individual (i.e. me) to vary quite widely in difficulty.

Coming back to the technical ability issue, I think all the judge was saying is that at this level, all the players are going to be "technically proficient" (and that's an understatement), so what marks out the winner is the ability to "perform". But of course, there is always room for improvement, technically. I don't think that EVER stops.