The Importance of Note Accuracy

[piano6888]

As a pianist who has taken lessons for 9 years and playing for over 15 years, I'd like to share my view on note accuracy.  

My view on note accuracy is that it is important and is a good habit to always strive for getting all the notes right, but! I will emphasize that there are more important aspects of playing such as phrasing, dynamics, articulation, tempi, rhythm, and musicality as a whole.  A really good performance (in my view) is where the performer is able to effectively convey the message/piece to the audience through his/her playing and the audience enjoys the show. (This is the baseline.) In order to do so, one must have musicality, phrasing, dynamics, articulation, tempi, rhythm, etc. of course.  A note perfect, but bland performance would be worse than one with a few slips (provided that they are not too detracting from the performance such as an very out of place wrong chord or a very obvious hesitation with a wrong note in the melody) in note accuracy.  The best of the best performances (world known concert pianists) would indeed be note perfect (or extremely close to 100%, and where even then the mistake is almost never even heard!) and still have the overall musicality and other aspects included, which is why most performances are really good (professional level) but not up to highest level (including mine).  

Of course, a performer should always aim to play ALL the correct notes, but if there are one or two in the performance/recording (I will discuss recordings in a different topic, because it is another topic altogether) then so be it because the overall performance is what is most important and the minor mistakes are just human.

Here is a brief story (many years ago when I was a piano student) about what my piano conservatory teacher did in several of the private lessons and master classes I've taken.  He prioritized rhythm and tempo, then phrasing and voicing, evenness in passages and articulation, with note accuracy only after the two/three, sometimes 2nd priority. Surprisingly, in my first year at the conservatory, I expected to be critiqued and evaluated on all fronts and that note accuracy would be one of the top two priorities in any given piece that I am working on. However, most of the time, it was one of the 3rd things and sometimes 2nd things that my piano teacher critiqued on.

I understand that there is a school of thought that goes around the notion that because notes are what makes up the piece/arrangement/music that one is playing, note accuracy is the most important aspect of playing.  
(I don't fully agree with that though, but of course it is not an excuse to ignore playing the right notes, because one should strive to play as well as they can and as correct as possible.)
 
What are your thoughts on note accuracy for a performer?

[piano6888]

Any one want to share their inputs on my opinion?