>>What The Audience Hears
I find I often have to switch my head when listening to music of any sort. I most certainly do not have perfect (or even well formed on some days) pitch, but I do suffer from detailed music visualization usually in the form of notation when listening to music. At work I sometimes have to stop listening to something I really like and switch to mindless tunes because the notes get in the way of my commuter screen (or worse I'll start to bob and hum without knowing it).
When listening in concert I've trained myself better to catch the wave if a player really engages me and silence the visual copyist and ride the music without inner comment, this usually results in color/pattern field visuals if I close my eyes but that usually does not pull me out of being at one with the musical event.
Most audiences from the MET to underground downtown clubs are not aware of the vagaries of intonation, the MET chorus was infamous for a long time but that never stopped them from wowing you in the big numbers.
Intonation is tremendously important but is an long term skill to developed and is fluid in performance. Musical events are not measured by tuning meters.
But they help a lot in the practice studio.
You can only really focus on one thing at a time, multitasking is an illusion.
My teachers in both voice and organ would make me separate things.
So in practice we'd have some passes at a piece where you're just hitting the pitches either very slowly or out of rhythm all together. Then other passes adding the rhythm exactly at a slow pace maybe with metronome. Finally you play the piece and at that pass you are focused on the musical event and it's proportions as an interpreter not a technician.
>>Air on the G string new piece played best of all
I find that pieces I've fully absorbed in my past lives play themselves sooner than new ones. The Air is one of those that's in my bones and sometimes if I'm too stressed or nervous about other newer pieces I'll just ... well I was going to say "play that one" but really I just step into the magic circle and let it come out, my ears are tuning it, I have to keep them awake but I don't let my mind talk to them about it.
