Like most musicians, I suspect, I’ve spent most of my performing life searching for consistency. The proverbial silver bullet that would ensure I was in the zone every time I took to the stage. Over the years, friends, fellow musicians, promoters and agents have seen me experiment with a wide variety of concert day (or D-Day, as someone I know rather ominously calls it) routines. There was a period when I’d lock myself in my dressing room for a good couple of hours pre-performance in order to study my scores. But when that didn’t work, I began to seek out anyone and everyone who was willing to chat as a way of avoiding my scores altogether. I’ve tried deep breaths and meditation, but that’s never been enough to calm my busy mind. So, when I spotted a close colleague shadow-boxing in the green room one day, I decided to give that a go instead (warning — not recommended unless you want jelly-like arms). There was a time when I would arrive super-early at venues, thinking it would help me acclimatise, only to find that the longer I spent at the scene of the crime about to unfold, the more tense I became. In response, late arrivals became my thing, until I realised that the stress I caused myself — and often  the promoters too — wasn’t helpful either.

Failing to find my own solutions, I voraciously consumed interviews from well-known performers, hoping to find something — anything — that would help me play well more consistently. I remember one particular article in which a famous violinist spoke about abstaining from sex for days prior to a performance, as a means of preserving energy. I was seriously impressed by the sacrifice the person in question was willing to make for their art, but I couldn’t quite figure out how such an approach would work with 100+ gigs in the diary every year. In any case, it’s fair to say my own musical dedication didn’t quite stretch that far (one has to have priorities, eh?), so my search went on.    

In truth, over the 25-or-so years in which I counted myself as a full-time concert pianist, I tried pretty much anything I could think of, all to no avail. I could never understand how it was that I might play the same programme on consecutive nights to two completely different standards. For almost every gig that I gave where I appeared calm, focused and — dare I say? — inspired, there was one in which I felt like my hands (and brain) belonged to someone else. It was horrible, frustrating and downright demoralising, until I eventually stumbled across the answer I’d been looking for —

— I was trying too hard.

Away from music, I’m a relatively simple man with relatively simple interests, and sport is one of them. A few years ago, I was lucky enough to attend a conference at which members of the British Olympic team and the then-England football manager, Gareth Southgate, exchanged ideas with leading music educators about how to extract the very best from the elite talents whom they were coaching. The overlaps were clear. In essence, we were all aiming for the same outcome — to enable and ensure consistent, peak performance while under pressure. The very thing that I’d been looking for. The lessons learned from that day turned out to be seminal in my evolution as both performer and teacher. 

One of my key takeaways was the realisation that the understanding of (and investment in) sports psychology is light years ahead of its musical equivalent, despite the commonalities that exist between the two. The former is big business — virtually every individual sports star or sports team has a psychologist in their corner these days — whilst the latter remains almost taboo. If you need a psychologist, you’re not cut out to be a performer tends to be the attitude exhibited across much of the music industry. Yet why should this be the case? If superstars from the world of sport — iconic figures who inspire millions — are happy to speak openly about the psychological support they receive, how can it be that musicians are shamed and expected to fend for themselves? Maybe I’m missing something here, but it all feels rather unjust. 

Nevertheless, there are certain things that we musicians can borrow from the sporting world whilst our own industry plays catch-up. One of them is recognition of arguably the greatest paradox in sport — namely, that athletes often perform worse the harder they try. Studies have shown that sportspeople reach their full potential at 70-90% of their maximum effort; more than that results in heightened anxiety, tight muscles, the loss of natural movement patterns and ‘foggy brain’ symptoms. As stress levels build, you switch from automatic movements (muscle memory) to conscious control, and when this happens, the brain can’t keep up with the complex movements required to achieve peak performance. More often than not, this leads to what sports psychologists call ‘paralysis by analysis’.

Think for a minute about the act of walking. Like playing an instrument, we master walking through practice and repetition, and it becomes such a natural process that an able-bodied, fit and healthy person doesn’t try to walk, it just happens without conscious thought. Until, that is, you have to walk in a public setting — such as making your way to centre-stage — and you suddenly become painfully aware of the complex coordination required to move each joint. And in that moment, as your self-awareness grows, your attempts to look cool and effortless are futile. The harder you try, the more ungainly and uncomfortable you become. 

In drawing this parallel, I get flashbacks of those past performances when I became over-conscious of my physical movements at the piano. Pieces that had previously seemed uncomplicated became sources of fear, while tricky passages that I’d spent hours mastering felt like unconquerable hurdles. In those moments, doubt set in and failure became a self-fulfilling prophecy. The realisation, therefore, that much of this was a result of me simply trying too hard was a eureka event. It explained everything. I’ve been playing the piano since I was 6 years old. That’s countless hours spent honing my craft, and thousands of concerts given along the way. It’s practically second nature to me, yet all too often, I found myself falling into the trap of thinking that greater effort equaled greater rewards. I’ll remember forevermore those occasions when I was consciously aware of trying during my concerts. In doing so, I was betraying a lack of trust in myself to do what I’d trained to do. What I thought was intense effort, was in fact anxiety. The piano was no longer my friend, it had become my foe, and something had to change.

So, in recent years, I’m proud to say I’ve started to care less. A lot less. For clarity, that’s not to say I no longer value the audience’s experience, but rather that I’m more willing to accommodate and accept my flaws. And guess what — my consistency levels have improved massively. This essay is partly inspired by KC’s thought-provoking offering in the last Zenezen newsletter, in which he wrote about his struggles with perfectionism. Over-trying is one of the ways in which this particular affliction can manifest itself, and we all know the old adage that, the more you want something, the less likely you are to get it. That’s certainly true of something that’s unobtainable anyway — there’s no such thing as a perfect performance — so the best we can do is ease off a little, accept that it won’t happen, and be kind to ourselves when the inevitable imperfections occur.  

In the late summer of 2024, I played a concert in Germany that inadvertently showcased my newfound insouciance in full flow. I’d taken the entire months of July and August off (and by off, I mean completely without sight of a piano), and had returned home just a couple of days before the recital, intending to use them for hardcore practice. But all sorts of stuff happened to derail my plans, and I left for the airport the evening before the gig having still not touched the keyboard. “It’ll be okay”, I told myself. “I can practice during the day tomorrow”. Except that didn’t happen either; my flight was cancelled, I stayed the night at an airport hotel and had to travel on D-Day, and further delays meant that I eventually ended up with a snatched 15-20 minutes of play-time before walking onstage (to a hall full of distinguished musicians, it should be noted). As a result, the vast majority of my programme remained untouched since I’d last played it several months earlier. In the past, this kind of scenario would have evoked major panic, yet on this occasion I felt strangely calm, relaxed and — above all — free. Perhaps it was the extreme absurdity of it all that prompted this sense of nirvana, but whatever the reason, I made no attempt to try hard, ended up playing a concert of which I was really proud, and afterwards received some of the best feedback of my entire career. Of course, I wouldn’t recommend this routine as a blueprint for success, but it was a vivid reminder of the value to be found in embracing one’s vulnerabilities instead of fighting them. The feeling of total acceptance and freedom that I experienced that night has been an inspiration to me in every performance I’ve given since.

Now: disclaimer time. Don’t get me wrong — I’m not advocating for one second that musicians around the world should suddenly stop dedicating themselves wholly to their art. I can already envisage an avalanche of complaints from teachers who are wondering why their students have downed tools, or from promoters who are questioning why their favourite artists are suddenly hitting fistfuls of wrong notes.  On the contrary, you have to earn the right to care less, and that means working your socks off when you practice. All the ‘trying-hard’ needs diverting to where it belongs and where it’s most effective, and that’s in the rehearsal room, our safe-space for experimentation and mistakes. Even my quasi-heroic concert tale is a bit misleading, for, in truth, I was only able to pull that off because of the decades of intense work that had preceded it. The point is, it’s all the blood, sweat and tears that you toil in private that enable you — with a positive mindset — to try a little less hard onstage. Caring less is a selective process, reserved exclusively for the concert hall.

At this point, you may well be thinking that all this talk of chilling out in-concert sounds good, but is easier said than done. And you’re right. It is. And you’d be quite justified in calling me out for raising this so late in my career, when I no longer count upon concerts as my main source of income. I remember all too well that sense of feeling on trial every time I took to the stage. The period of my life when I relied on a full diary of gigs to pay the bills. I can’t deny it’s easier to be carefree when concerts are more of a hobby than a profession, even if my professional pride still burns strongly, but I desperately wish I’d been introduced to these theories — which are, after all, grounded in science — much earlier. Had I been, I’m almost certain that life as a performing musician would have been far more enjoyable for me, and I share them here in the hope that readers can learn from my mistakes.

There’s one final point that’s probably worth making before drawing things to a close — tangential, perhaps, but relevant: the musician giving the performance is often the least-qualified person to make an accurate assessment of its quality. A controversial statement, I know, but one that I truly believe. You see, our own subjective feelings about a performance, caught up in the heat of the moment, are often far-removed from the perceptions of our audience, the paying public. They are blissfully unaware of our unpublished vision of perfection, or the frustration we feel at having failed to achieve it. All they know is what they hear and experience in the time they spend in our presence. As I reflect back on my performing career, I now recognise that the concerts I viewed most positively were quite often not the ones that were best enjoyed by those in attendance. Yes, there were those undeniable occasions when everything came together and something magical hung in the air, but there were plenty of times when I walked offstage feeling good about my playing only to get lukewarm feedback, and many others when I felt utterly miserable yet received glowing reviews. I have a close (musical) friend who often fondly recalls a performance I gave at a far-away countryside venue several years ago as one of the best he’s heard me play. I’ve never fully confessed to him that my mind was elsewhere pretty much throughout; all I could think about was the pressing matter of where to find post-concert food in such a remote location. Perhaps that was — unbeknownst to me at the time — early evidence that trying less hard really does work.

So, next time you venture onstage, think about taking it all a bit less seriously. Lower your sights, have faith in yourself, and don’t try too hard. You never know — you might surprise yourself by reaching higher than you’ve ever reached before.