Final i attended a performance by the Seattle Symphony of Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto night. If you’ve ever seen the movie Shine, you know how daunting this piece is a concert pianist. It is a minute that is 40-plus, composed of 30,000 individual records, most of that have become performed-often at lightning speed-in a particular order; with nuance, dynamics, and passion; real time; from memory; in the front of a discerning audience of several thousand individuals, and a much more discerning orchestra and conductor.

Can you state “pressure”?

The soloist, Kirill Gerstein, performed brilliantly.

Just what does it decide to try try this? What does it just take to perform at your very best whenever it matters many? When all eyes are on you, and objectives are high?

One of the keys, because it works out, is always to perhaps not look at the records.

A musician of Mr. Gerstein’s …