To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to me in exasperation when I was a small boy. “You will never play Mozart the way Arthur Schnabel does, but there is no reason in the world why you should not play your scales the way he does.” What the piano teacher forgot to add—probably because it was so obvious to her—is that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they do unless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them. There is, in other words, no reason why anyone with normal endowment should not acquire competence in any practice. Mastery might well elude
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