rogerch I do have stage fright and fear of the red dot when I’m playing a piece I’ve learned. The fear is still there but greatly reduced when I’m improvising.
That makes a lot of sense of course!
When improvising I feel confident that I can recover from any fumbles, and since it’s a brand new piece who’s to say that was a wrong note? Really, I meant to do that!
Do you ever have moments where you completely lose what you're doing and your fingers stop?
When I'm playing my jury piece, there are several spots where it's a similar series of notes, but then it either moves into pattern A, pattern B, or pattern C. (I think a lot of pieces are like that).
Anyway, sometimes, I am playing and I move into the wrong pattern. When that happens, I generally just keep playing and "play through" it.
But other times, I move into the wrong pattern and it's like I've turned the corner and stepped into a parallel universe. I have no idea where I am, and my fingers just stop. In the worst instances, I have to back up to familiar spot and go through it again (like Ron and Harry trying to ram their luggage cart into Platform 9 and 3/4 but just hitting solid wall 😛
In practice sessions, I do various things to prevent this (of course!) but one of the side effects of performance anxiety is that sometimes this "just" happens.
In improvising, as you say, there's no rule that you have to be moving into pattern B (for example), but on the other hand, I could still imagine the pianist takes a (musical) turn and finds themself somewhere completely unexpected, which would be disorienting. Does that ever happen when you're improvising? (whether due to stage fright or not)