I feel that I am an educated pianist and listener since this is my profession but I have musical tastes which are mostly unaffected by education.
This was one of the issues I had with my previous teacher haha. She thought that your idea of where music should go changes a lot with time and instruction, and I felt that mine basically hasn't changed much over the years I've played piano, but rather progressively refined itself. I don't look back with distaste at the music I liked starting out -- in fact, I sometimes think I had better music taste back then because it was unhindered by musical education and I was experiencing it more directly. Now, I tend to try to get myself to like things while back then I just had this raw sense telling me what was good and what wasn't, and I think it was actually pretty good because that was what I used to develop my own sense of how I should play the piano which has worked quite well for me so far.
The reason why I think people connect to pieces they know well is that they are anticipating the sounds constantly and this allows them to immerse themselves in the music. When you play something they have never heard they are not sure what they are listening to or what to expect or what may come next. It can be a confusing experience especially if you play something very demanding and since they have no expectation as to what will come next their minds can wander and their effective listening then comes in waves.
I remember trying to listen to Beethoven and understand it. I was trying to load all kinds of musical fragments in my short-term memory in order to be able to appreciate it (without having heard it before). It sort of worked, and I was able to follow a few aspects of the music. However, it didn't 'click' as much and I didn't have the same appreciation as I do now once I can play sections of the music in my head from memory. Something similar happened with the Chopin ballades, which took about a year to figure out.
There certainly can be an incredible power behind music and words put together and certainly a huge reason for how the majority of people connect to music. As a pianist the pieces I connect with the deepest are those which I can hear the emotional images, sense the many situations of life in sound.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that the very reason I prefer instrumental music is because it is abstract, and does not tell you what exactly to think. That allows you to engage in it in a more personal way, open to interpretation, rather than vocal music for which doing that is much more difficult. Bach's counterpoint just
is, but the ways people interact with it and get an emotional payoff are very diverse.
Describing real life situations which effected the composer and may have inspired the creation of their works allows anyone to connect on some emotional level without even hearing the music and then when the music starts they have their attention focused and can connect. You do a good service for others who listen to pieces you play for the first time doing things like this, I have always found it helps them listen and experience the music much better.
For me personally, I like to try and just listen to a piece in an unfamiliar style firsthand, but that may just be my bias as I have a certain knack of (and have developed a sort of method for) being able to understand a broad variety of music.
For some people, I have been successful by going over a piece with them and asking them to go with their visual imagery, or suggesting a very wide term such as "water", and demonstrating a motif, followed by asking them to listen to it carefully. However, this may require a talent in itself, and I have seen that often even people who
are trained in music take it too literally -- one person I showed my improvisation to was very confused because it didn't have much resembling major or minor scales, so they didn't know what to feel. It also works better with one-on-one interaction.
It feels rather weird. I remember that Jeux D'Eau made perfect sense the first time I listened to it. I showed it to someone else and they were utterly confused.
The music can simply stand for itself and nothing else matters to them. I had one person in all my years of concerting come up to me at the end of the concert and tell me that and I agreed with them with a however.
I think this may be the purest way of experiencing music. We are limited by our vocabulary and words can very well fail to express an emotion. Just listening to a piece of music and trying to let it wash over you, experiencing the emotion as it comes by, is imo the best way to listen to music. It is of course very difficult to do with unfamiliar music most of the time. Note that the emotion is still very much there, it's just that it's being experienced in a sort of direct fashion without language of any sort occupying your conscious thoughts.
I think this is too subtle of an education to give to listeners who are not instrumentalists themselves. If you describe the music before playing it as I wrote in the previous quote I responded to, I think this will help them a great deal more.
Perhaps you're right. But it's the sort of education I've had. Gusts of wind and other wistful analogies musicians like to conjure up are often far too vague to express the kinds of emotions pieces generate, and I've found more success by making up my own mind by listening to pieces. In a way, I trust my ear absolutely. It's the only way I see forward, because if you doubt what your instinct tells you about a piece of music, it's very hard to form a progressively refined interpretation or sense of music, because you will always be stuck questioning basic things (does this modulation to a minor scale mean it should be more 'sad'?). In my experience, the best results come when you are certain of where your inner ear is taking you, really listen, and follow it through. It is much more likely to result in an internally consistent interpretation which will speak to the listener.