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Technique Can Only Takes You So Far

When most people refer to technique, they are addressing issues such as how to use your fingers, hands and arms, how to find the right notes and how to accurately play each passage.   Although these issues are important and should properly be taught to a young student, there comes a point in one's studies where finding the right notes is no longer enough. What separates a good pianist from a great one is his/her ability to inflict the right tone, touch and colour.   A pianist could play all the right notes as quickly and as accurately as possible but if there is no emotion or variety in tone and colour, the speed and precision is not nearly as great as it could be.  
Tobias Matthay is well known for his writings and lectures discussing piano technique.   He addresses all issues from proper arm, hand and finger movement, to weight distribution and muscle usage.   Yet, I found his writings on colour and tone variety to be particularly interesting.   I find that colour and tone quality is one of the hardest techniques to teach a student because the tone and colour that a player generates is so strongly connected to his/her own individual interpretation.   I don't believe that a child should be told what colour and tone is right and what colour and tone is wrong.   Rather, a child should be taught how to inflict different tones and colours and how to achieve different characters by their way of touch.   A child will eventually mature and be able to interpret a work on his/her own and will be able to choose what tone and colour quality is appropriate.   Until then, a teacher has to illustrate the various colours and tones and what techniques are needed to achieve these.  
Matthay enforces that music consists of two elements: the emotion element and the shape element (Matthay, 1937, Pg.1).   Emotion is something that cannot be taught or explained because we either feel it or we do not.   Emotion and feeling is different for each player.   It is their individual interpretations...