pianoloverus Although I doubt he had ever seen the piece before, he sat down and played the passage perfectly and then told me he was a violin student at some conservatory
Yep, some people are just incredibly accomplished like that aren’t they!
This is slightly thread drift because it’s not the same kind of “accomplished,” but when we still lived Japan, I had a friend who was an elementary school music teacher, IIRC she had completed a master’s degree in music education. Piano was her main instrument and she played a handful of others. But most of the time, she spent her days standing up at the piano, playing while standing, teaching various music classes to different grades.
Anyway, she could sightread anything, and transpose to a different key on the fly from a page of music she’d never seen before. All while talking at the same time! I would find something (a score) I wanted to sing, and she would starting playing and adjust the key for me, and then I’d sing and she’d play, it was so fun! I could also give her any score, for any kind of music, and she could play it at tempo, beautifully, first time through.
To me it seemed like she had achieved the highest level of music literacy.
I’ll never have that facility, but I can dream! 😃
