Piano Teaching Challenges

The term mental signifies "emanating from the brain." It therefore includes musical emotion and feeling, as well as intellectual perception.
Moreover, it is not enough to have the ability to perceive musical structures, and to have the ability to execute the perceived sound formations, but we must not forget to use both of these faculties which are (1. musical sense 2. execution) during the moment of performance. The physical act of producing sound involves movement of our limbs against the pianoforte key. For there is a vast difference between merely hearing, and really listening.
It is the distinction between merely sounding notes automatically, and sounding them with musical purpose.
Question: Which skills are required to fulfill the musical aim?
Both musical and executive attention^[1] is required.

Successful performance when analyzed can be divided into 2 things. 1) The purely mental process of conception is involved in a successful performance.
2) The mental and muscular process of communicating is involved in a successful performance.
To have something to express implies imagination and invention and good pianoforte technique means being able to provide all possible tone effects of which the instrument is capable. Keyboard technique implies knowledge, judgment, and imagination.

The second process implies special instrumental-insight and attainments on the part of ther performer.
Expression: To have something to express implies imagination and invention. To be able to communicate your intentions by means of the pianoforte keys, implies the conquest of technique.
To have a good technique, means being able to provide all possible tone effects of which the instrument is capable. Technique itself implies knowledge, judgment and imagination, as well as the physical habits that will enable us to obtain from the instrument the tones required to build up the imagined musical construction.

By requisite sounds is not meant merely the right notes, but also the right tone-kinds to form those requisite tone-contrasts by means of which musical sense can be made evident to the listener.
A performance can only appeal to us, through the medium of contrast. Through contrasts of

1. pitch, note-combination (harmony),
2. time-pulse and its divisions,
3. speed of movement (tempo ),
4. tone quantity, quality, and duration.

Because the performer is able to choose different degrees and combinations of these components, he is able to communicate his emotions to us through the piano. Like everything else, a performance is necessarily built up of ultimate units, in thise case tonal impressions of a specified length and volume. These ultimate units, in the case of a musical performance, consist of separate individual sounds or notes. Every one of these necessarily has its distinct influence on the effect of the whole. Hence, in performance, there is no such thing as a note of no consequence. For the least-accented note demands as much care in performance as the most accented one. Both notes will equally ruin the resulting musical picture, if they are not executed correctly. Each note must therefore enter at the precise time-place.

[1]Executive attention refers to the physiological components of the player required by the performer to set the key in motion.