‘So far as it is alive, [it] is made again at every instant. It is made afresh as part of the process of being known afresh; what is permanent is what is always fresh, and it can be fresh only in performance – that is, in reading and seeing and hearing what is actually in it at this place and this time … Or put another way, the critic brings to consciousness the means of performance’ (Blackmur 1955: 199). When R. P. Blackmur wrote that, he was of course referring to literature. Using the quotation for my own purposes (Cone 1989: 108), I have tried to establish the critic of music as a kind of performer, whose ‘re-creation of a composition is, as it were, an ideal imaginary performance’ (: 102). But, as I pointed out, one can equally well view the performer as a kind of critic: ‘To put it aphoristically: the performance criticizes the composition’ (: 101).

The significance of my title should now be clear. By calling attention to the pianist as critic, I am not implying that he spends his spare time dashing off reviews for the daily press or producing more serious essays for the scholarly journals – although he may very well do so. What I mean is that, if he is a serious musician, his piano-playing itself is a critical endeavour – that each performance is an implied act of criticism. By singling out the pianist, I advance no special claims for his instrument or its music. I chose him for practical and personal reasons, for he is the only performer of whom I can speak from first-hand acquaintance.