But there is another and less obvious factor in the development of an instrumentalist which may be worth going into: looking through manuscript works in the composer’s presence- works for orchestra or piano, or chamber groups, or oratorios – with the composer pounding away at the piano, bellowing the different parts, satisfying his desperate need of communication with a sympathetic musical soul, sometimes even going so far as to invite criticism from his more or less willing victim. It is inevitable that a certain percentage of time given to these sessions is time lost, but to be able to look into a composer’s workshop, to see “Work in Progress,” to be privileged sometimes to offer disinterested suggestions – all this can be very rewarding to the virtuoso. For, in the very nature of his virtuoso career, he spends too much time in repetition, in an often egocentric, sometimes egomaniacal, contemplation of “Himself” as measured against “The Work” – or, in the case of much of the virtuoso repertoire, “the works.” In these sessions the listener, usually alone with the composer, is forced to take an almost active part; nothing less will satisfy the composer. The latter’s keyed-up sensitivity will detect any letdown in our alertness, and woe to us – we may then have to listen to a whole section all over again! << less