Jonathan Biss

“Ultimately, rather than making the mistake of trying to be someone else, I wanted to make my own mistakes. This was not simply a question of coming to terms with my intense admiration for Mr. Fleisher; it had to do with a fundamental shift in my mentality — worrying less about the approval or disapproval of the person who happened to be listening at that moment. Once I stopped looking over my shoulder and instead focused my energy on my own responses to my playing (and separating these from other people’s responses is, of course, a complex and ongoing process) the idea of erring became a lot less constricting, and my desire to take on the most challenging music thus became far less mitigated by anxiety.”
― Jonathan Biss, Beethoven's Shadow