To me, the idea, even though it is true, that the audience won't recognize the difference in certain levels of quality is dangerous because it will allow you to excuse yourself things which you can do better.
The problem with musicians is that we can always do better. I totally agree that we must craft the music for ourselves first, or God, but we must also give the music to society.
We can always do better but when it is good enough to present to an audience? When you have achieved your maximum of improvement? That can go on forever and you may die before you ever play for an audience. I know thats being melodramatic but the message really is we never are ready enough. We will never improved enough on a piece, as musicans we are perfectionists by nature when it comes to sound production because we are so proud of being given the gift to create sound. This can become obsession and thus shy you away from giving your music to the community.
I found myself, previously, instead of giving full attention to learning new repetoire, I would obsess over what I already knew and constantly improve upon it. I find music constantly recreates itself forever and ever, you can get totally lost in your own confusion as to what sounds best because that also freakishly changes after you strive for perfection obsessively.
... when i go to play - i don't think - 'am i going to play this perfectly?' i just start playing and hope for the best.
I can't help but think before I sit down to play for an audience: Don't you dare stuff anything up, you've practiced so hard don't muck up now! How embarassing if you play an inaccuracy!
That type of thinking can make you totally obsess about minimising the chance of error while practicing and learn to cover up errors if they creep in. It puts a lot of pressure on yourself.
When people come up to me saying it was great etc I have this little speck in the back of my head saying, yeah but what about all that crap that could have been better? It is a terrible thinking pattern to trap yourself in. I am never ready enough for a performance, I just dive head first, eyes closed, even though I'm scared if I let it control my decision making I would sit in a room and play piano for myself forever and no one else. But I see so many students of music never deal with this fear, the fear is always there you can never remove it, but you can deal with it. I know a lot of music teachers who are like this.
I start to see a way to remove this fear by understanding that the listeners are not so obsessed about the perfect sound coming out of the piano while I play as I am. When I consider about what I am thinking about when I listen to other people play in concert my thoughts are not; this could be better or that, that would take all the enjoyment out of sitting in a concert, that is doing work, being an adjudicator in a competition. Instead when I hear inaccuracies they are unimportant if the overall sound is projected beautifully.
But I myself would get infurated over inaccuracies if I where playing, this is a terrible paradox! You care about playing perfectly yourself so you get better, but you do not care when you hear other people play inaccuracies. You realise that other people also do not care if you do not produce perfect sound but you care a lot. arrrrgg!!!!
Like so many things in life I think this is a matter of balance. In this case, balancing a strive for perfection with acceptance. Lean too far in any direction and the overall quality of the performance suffers (a loss of meaning in both cases).
It is hard for me to accept anything which isn't optimal when I play myself. If even one note feels uncontrolled in a rapid arpeggio run for instance, only I can feel it, rarely will many people hear it, but you practice hours to get rid of it. Do you simply accept that little tarnish? You have to sometimes otherwise you would never move on, you have to lower your expectations of yourself if you have very high expectations or you can simply obsess with trying to achieve something unimportant to anyone else but yourself. Accepting your playing is very important, we should be proud of our sound and not feel too critical because it can hold us back more than improve us.
Perfection is unhuman and doesn't belong to humankind.
Arts is human expression as such it refutes perfection just like human refute it.
Perfection destroys and kills arts.....
Do you know the uncanny valley? It's a theory by a roboticist that explains how the more something tries to emulate a perfection we can't really obtain the more is becomes uninteresting, boring and almost scary or sickening to us humans....
I wholly believe that we can never be perfect. I believe perfection is when your mind says, right there is nothing I can hear that is wrong with your playing. I have had these moments but then after a while after you repeat the piece over and over again you start hearing things which might not actually be there and try to form it so it fits a perfect model. This actually changes the music and ruins it, the music starts playing you, not the other way around.
I think Glenn Gould said something along the lines, that he never played the same Bach piece too many times because it lost its "freshness" if played too much. There is probably some wise teaching in that, the more we repeat a piece the more it might transform itself into model of perfection which it shouldn't take. That is not to say that we shouldn't practice one piece for a long time but rather try not to totally recreate the orginal sound the composer intended, just play the music don't start experimenting with your ideal world of sound because it will change the music and waste your time.
Perfection only exists as an aspirational light at the end of a never ending tunnel.
The inspiration that the perfect model of performance gives is definately something which pushes us on when we are practicing by ourselves. There can be a difficulty for most to accept that producing this perfection all the time is impossible. There is always that little part which could have been done better. When do we actually move on to something else instead of lingering on small parts shrugging our shoulders as to why it is not coming out how we want it exactly to come out? Do we allow this model of perfection which inspires us to take control over the rate in which we move on to new parts of music?
I think all you've discovered is the difference between working on the notes and working on the music. The notes must be there, but your'e right, its a much lesser crime to have a few notes missing than to have the music missing 
The difference between working on the notes and music is simply obvious, I don't believe it takes a lot of effort to see the difference, nor is the ability to see both seperately relevant. For me when I work on the notes I simultaneously work on the music, the two are inseperable, I never play simply notes without musical expression, that wastes time in my mind. Even when you play a lot of repetition on a small part we must play it as if we where playing it in concert, there is no saying "Oh I will just get the notes first then I will put in the expression", in my mind this is inefficient and slow learning. It allows you to excuse yourself if you do not play musically something which troubles you, it allows you to give yourself an excuse to extend the time require to learn a part of music. Doing everything straight away is my method, some people like to do it in layers, Left hand, right hand, together then add the dynamics, feeling etc, slow in my mind, but the only way for some.
No what I have actually discovered is trying to understand what is good enough. When do you say enough is enough and move on. I find myself as an artist who would always put on an extra brush stroke in my picture and then constantly do this every day never being completely satisfied. A good artist knows when to stop I feel. So I am starting to learn how to push through insecurity and realise that what I play is good, it doesn't have to be perfect because trying to be perfect simply wastes time and not many people appreciate perfect playing opposed to good playing. Also I find that I can learn more music and I free my mind from the mental strains of trying to be perfect if I accept very subtle inaccuracies. I am not talking about note errors, or incorrect musical expression. I am talking about the finer points of making a performance of a piece air tight. Those fine points can hound you, they can really be a demon monkey on your back if you let it.
Thankyou all for your posts. This was actually the third time I wrote this reply, the website went down on me 2 times in a row, very frustrating eheh. Reading all the experiences on this topic has be very theraputic for me
Topic: Good playing vs Perfect playing