Performance is risky business, it demands self confidence and not everyone are confident in themselves. I think if you could be assured you would play without error and the audience would cheer at the end there would be little nerves, but you cannot see into the future.
Trail and error shows that you can do it though and that should give you confidence. If you can sucessfully play a recital for a private group of people then there should be little difference if you multiply the number of listeners.
I like to perform simply to share music and to let people see music being created in front of themselves. The world these days are so fast and busy, sometimes to take people away from it and say, here listen to the sound of a piano, heres a way to listen to it, heres a memory, story, emotion attached to it. Do you feel it? Isn't it amazing how sound can make us feel things, even subtle sounds of a piano. These days we see men and women dancing in some flash video clip with fancy sounds to sell us music, its nice to go back to how subtle music actually is.