I enjoyed this article about pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim's "lack of perfection." In "Is pianistic perfection all that it's cracked up to be?" The Guardian's classical music writer Tom Service discusses the perils of expecting perfection from musicians. Because of the living in the age of electronica, "we actually have an incredibly narrow calculus of perfection when it comes to judging musical performances."
And of course, performers are aware of this, often--quite often--putting down their instruments permanently because audiences (& conductors, friends, teachers) expect superhuman, robot-like execution.
