Hi Jerry,
Think of performances as baking experiments, where you have the heat on high enough for ingredients to transform and combine. There will be problems that only become evident during the baking, which you will try to avoid through observation, analysis and imagination. You try to observe what really happened leading up to the baking and then observe what happened during and after the baking.
You analyze those observations and make some constructive, intelligent guesses as to the causes and effects.
You then use your imagination to come up with another way to put ingredients together for a new experiment.

In music/performance terms, you observe how you've practiced leading up to the performance, and observe how you perform - in all areas or body, mind and heart.
You try to analyze the causes and effects of what happened during the performance.
You then imagine what you can do differently so that you will have different results during the next performance.

The emotional "control" we are looking for is not a throttling of the emotions that are involved in performing. You need emotions - these are the source of energy and engagement. But we need to enter into the performance act with a sense of observation, rather than willful control. Remember, emotions are faster than thoughts. They can be influenced only by setting up situations and letting the emotions happen. By letting the experiment happen, the emotions will be what they will be. By trying to control them, you only add a layer of emotion to your emotional reactions, which complicates matters by exacerbating the effects of negative emotions while masking your true emotional reactions.

You can observe yourself in a more emotional state during practice and get a clearer sense of what might happen in a concert. You do this by creating a true sense of engagement and energy. For those of you who did the learning without practicing exercise, you will have noticed that your emotional state was more excited and nervous than usual. It is possible to create a sense of freshness and discovery every time you sit at the piano. "Practicing" less (physical practice, that is) helps keep the physical act of playing fresher, more novel, more direct. It helps keep our emotional reactions to the pieces we are playing refreshed. Thinking about music, especially about music you love and which you are excited to learn and play, makes you want to hear it more, play it more.

So, on the one hand, you increase the emotional engagement during practicing. On the other, you let your emotions happen without controlling them during performance, and closely observe and remember them for analysis afterwards. Eventually, you should find that your two emotional states will approach each other, until you are in a place where you are emotionally very similar, whether you are playing or practicing.

Ideally, you also reach this kind of state for the body and for the mind, through the same kind of process. You practice, then perform with observation. You eventually find your physical state to be the same before and during a concert.
You practice mentally, and you observe your mental thoughts during a performance. You then find yourself more and more in equilibrium, regardless of where you are and what you are doing.

These two states will constantly be pulling away from each other, and it is our job to know that and to constantly work towards keeping them connected.

I'm sure btb is banging his head on a wall with all this snake-oil talk! But this is really how I work, and I think it works for everyone, whether it is acknowledged or not. It just works better for those who acknowledge it!

Frederic

Interesting, Frederic. So, if I understand you correctly, you're suggesting that when I practice I should be trying to tune into 3 levels of sensation - my emotional state, my mental state, and how it feels physically to play. I'm thinking this may be a lot of energy to spend from beginning to end of a piece, and perhaps you are referring mainly to particularly challenging passages. Then, when I perform, I tune into those same things, and rather than trying to control them, I simply observe and compare them to what it felt like when practicing.

Are you suggesting that simply by becoming more in touch with these aspects while practicing a difficult passage I am more likely to be able to reproduce them in performance? That's a really interesting concept, Frederic. Normally when I practice a difficult passage, I don't think of my emotional state at all - I concentrate mainly on the physical aspect of playing it and the sound I am producing. This is really interesting.

My question is, then, while you are performing and you feel yourself "out of control," say, are you suggesting that the very act of tuning into how it feels will over time help you match the way it feels in practice without making a conscious effort to do so i.e. without having to actively reign in whatever is going wrong during performance? In other words, when we perform we think only of reproducing the physical movements, sound, and emotional content of the music, but we don't think of reproducing our own emotional and mental state we had while practicing, and even the physical movements may go on some kind of foreign auto-pilot. Very interesting... Have I understood you correctly, Frederic?

Sounds like the snake-oil Danny Kaye was selling in "The Inspector General" ... great spoof.

An inability to sight-read off-the-cuff has resulted in the snake-oil chappie resorting to a mind, body, heart approach ... which works for him.

So far we've hit Scarlatti Sonata I and the dull Beethoven 2-2 ... both of which are highly scalar ... but merely an undistinguished reminder of the distant past ... with resultant lack of emotion ... Scarlatti got born too early (Baroque Era) while Beethoven at 22, was an inarticulate beginner, who had just moved to Vienna ... it took opus nos. 7 and 10 to reach the LB magic of 13 (Pathetique).

But back at the snake-oil ranch ... emotional rapture dies when the score is devoid of quality note patterns ... to spark the marvel of aesthetic balance,

Wonder what dedicatee Haydn thought of the immature 2-2 work ... Beethoven later distanced himself from once having a few lessons with Papa.

Hi btb,
I'm not sure if you were referring to me as having "an inability to sight-read off-the-cuff", but this is certainly not the reason I resort to a mind/body/heart approach.
In fact, I'm a very good sight-reader. Too good, in fact! The connection between what I see and what my body does is so quick, it actually bypasses my conscious mind, and I'm left having played the work very well, but with very little memory of what I played and little emotional reaction to it as well.
By keeping myself away from what is easy (sight-reading), I've forced myself to enhance the other, weaker aspects of my piano-playing.

Approaching the activity with body/mind/heart is a way to see where you are strong and where you are weak. And then to work on the weak!

For Jerry, you are really taking it to deep place. I think that the difference between reproducing the personal emotional state and reproducing the musical emotional state is important.
Observing and remembering is the key to emotional work. Practicing is all about observing, remember and analyzing. In all areas of body/mind/heart. If you are open to looking in all three areas, and you recognize what you are looking for (which was the point of this exercise), then it will become quite natural after a while. Of course, to get there, it takes some practice!