[Dr. Jacoby]

The only explanation I have for this is that with the piano, after you’ve hit the key you can’t really shape the tone the way you can with a wind or string instrument, making it, to me, less expressive. Of course, for a piano player, much of the artistry lies in how you hit the key: softly, loudly, gently or with attack etc. But somehow that doesn’t seem to be enough for me.

This.

Piano is my main instrument, and while I love the piano for what it can do, this encapsulates what it cannot do. If you hit a note on an instrument where you control how it sustains, you can shape and refine the pitch and tone. But once you plunk a note on a piano, that’s it. It’s out there. You live with the sound you produced, or you quickly try to correct it by plunking a different note.