And Bach! Yes, I know I'm not so familiar with Bach's keyboard works as I am with Chopin's music, but I am working on it, and he's the one composer that really inspires me to become familiar with all of his music, so....one day soon, I will know it all. I have been listening less lately, and practicing more, but I go through occasional periods where I listen a lot. Also, from earlier:


I think I will be a mixture of all these things. But two motivations stick out to me:

1. I work best when I have goals to work toward. This is why I didn't progress much at all in the ten years between college stints. But juries are only once a semester, and recitals once a year, and once I'm done with my performance degree, I will probably be going to grad school for theory, and won't have many performance requirements.

2. I love the idea of making music available to people for free, and I want to do my best to interpret my favorite composers in such a way that will help others to love their music as much as I do.

I find the criticism less useful for me because I know most of my problems already. That is not to say that I know all of them, or that I find criticism to be completely useless; I do have a tendency to respond better to technical advice than advice on interpretation (which generally puts my back up), but I can handle even the latter so long as it is delivered in a technical context (like Chris's criticism often is, for example).