hmmmm... I will start by saying that I find this to be a very interesting question. Upon thinking about it, I remembered a time when I was working on a specific couple of pieces and I used to think "when I can play these pieces, I will know I can really play the piano". Well, that never happened as such. I mean, I played the pieces, but, it certainly did not open some gateway for me to feel like I went from not being able to play, to suddenly being able to play.
I think sometimes I still live in that trap, actually. "When I can do this, then I will be able to play".... type thing. But, we never arrive at those places, I am finding. Not that we don't learn whatever it is that we set out to learn, it is just that the path we take to get there turns out to look very different and take us somewhere entirely different than what we originally thought it be like, from before we really got into it. The perspective changes along the way.
With that being said, I have had times when I have felt as though I am truly playing the piano. Sometimes it has been during formal performances, sometimes it has been when I am alone, sometimes it has been while I am playing for my teacher or even for my pets. Interestingly enough, the actual music I was playing has varied as well. Sometimes I have been improvising on purpose, sometimes it has been while improvising during a formal concert wihtin a formal piece of music during a memory lapse, sometimes it has been while I am playing exactly what is written on the page.
So, what I realized somewhere along the lines, is that
really playing is not actually dependent on outward circumstances. What I am playing, for whom I am playing, where I am playing, what schools I have been to, which teachers I have studied with (though, out of all of the things I just listed, I would say that this particular aspect seems to have the most overlap on this topic) and so on.
What it comes down to for me, I suppose, is an
experience I have within while I am playing. And, I can say that in all of the cases I mentioned above, my experiences within the very moments of feeling like I am really playing has involved the following VERY DISTINCT factors :
1. Courageousness/fearlessness/unworried
2. I feel no resistence to being open musically/no walls
3. Very calm focus
4. In-the-moment energy and thinking
For me,
that is really playing (and probaby a big addiction for me). In the end, I believe it is entirely personal and primarily internal as to whether or not an individual feels they can really play the piano. For some it may be a matter of people telling them they can. I wonder how far that alone would get a person ? Whatever the case, I would venture to say that the point should be to form some kind of internal platform to stand on (and nobody else needs to know what that is), no matter how small or unrespected by "the world" and then stand on that and fearlessly build from there. Whatever a person feels they can truly stand on, it probably most clearly defines that person's ability to play. So, it is worthwhile to pick/discern something really, really strong.
I think this aspect is often difficult to come to terms with, but it is whatever one finds themselves coming back to over and over. Probably in the end, it is nothing more or less than simple
in*tu*i*tion.

m1469