That sentence just told a huge part of my story, especially the bit about learning piano. The pressure was so great, I eventually had to fly 3,000 miles away to escape it, give up music, then take it up again in my - dotage, I think is the word.

The tiresome Mozart analogy once again rears its head. The thing is, you can't really achieve anything without talent, but talent by itself is just potential, worth very little if, as you rightly point out, you don't have the resources of time and money and focus that are required to nurture it.

Where do people come up with this 10,000 hours thing? It's like everyone wants a formula, a little pill to take that will simplify a complex process that consists of luck, genetics, environment and character. The only rule is that there are no rules. Great mastery is part accident, part commitment. It's a sport of nature, like a mutation.

Mozart's father, Leopold, was a renowned pedagogue - he was training Mozart virtually from the time of his birth. He was also a morose narcissist who nearly destroyed his son's chances for autonomy and normalcy through his lifelong manipulations and desperate need to control the child who had given his life meaning.

And Mozart was not all that remarkable a composer until he matured. Sure he wrote symphonies when he was six - have you heard them? They are the macaroni pictures of Viennese classicism, if Salzburg had only had the refrigerators to stick them on.