I still don't understand how you can think that a teacher needs to be able to play faster than you can. It's just idiocy in my opinion. Just because they can't play faster than you doesn't mean they don't have valuable musical input. Something that you wouldn't have thought up on your own. I understand where you come from, and I by no means am suggesting that you should accept your teachers word unquestioningly, but musically, they may have lots of things to teach you. Having someone tell you something, often saves you the trouble of failing and finding it out yourself. Also, there are lots of intellectual components of interpretation that need to be taught. Lets take some basic theory. Tonic resolves to dominant. If you know this, you can spot tension and resolution, and interpret accordingly. If you don't know that, there are lots of times when you simply won't notice. Pedaling is another part of interpretation that needs to be taught, because pedaling is tied technically to how it affects the music, but is still part of interpretation. Ie how to use the pedal to color tones rather than using it simply to cover your own inadequacies. There are lots of things that need to be taught that simply can't be found out by listening. Sure listening can help you in the context of the piece you're listening to, but as far as principles of interpretation that can applied universally, those are much easier taught than discovered. For example lets take Bach. Interpretation of Bach, and any music really, has stylistic associations tied to it. Is it possible to listen and find these? I'm sure it is. It's just a waste of time, and you probably won't get as much out of it as listening to someone that really knows what they're talking about. Back to Bach. In Bach, there are lots of interpretive rules that you need to know to play the piece as Bach meant it to be played. I don't think you could discover all of those simply by listening to recordings of Bach. And of course, those rules are just guidelines, but it certainly helps to know them doesn't it? It seems to me that your technical fascination has it's roots in arrogance, that you seem to believe that no one has anything to teach you musically. Let me ask you then. Those recordings you take ideas from. The artist is teaching you. Indirectly of course, but they are still teaching you. Wouldn't it be more beneficial if say you had been able to ask the artist about their musical ideas? Wouldn't you have more insight as to why they do it, and be able to apply those ideas as principles again and again? That certainly seems much more valuable than only being able to apply the idea in the piece you're listening to because you don't understand the idea behind the musical action. At any rate, I think you need to get off the high horse as it were, and understand that there are more musical people in the universe. Of course, you should never just be your teacher's clone, but that doesn't mean that musical things can't be taught. Oh... Technique and Musicality are highly interdependent. One cannot exist without the other. You are right about technique in that regard. But technical faculty does not guarantee musicality, and musicality certainly does not guarantee technical faculty. I think your logic is fundamentally flawed.
Topic: How good is Bernhard at piano?