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Some random thoughts:

Practice a LOT.

(Actually, this is the same regardless of how much talent someone has.)

The real question is how people practice. And here, the answer lies less in what you do and more in how you think while practicing. When you're practicing, you have to keep an open ear and open mind. You have to invent exercises and motions for yourself. One of the most popular pieces of advice is "slow practice," and that's excellent advice, but it's very possible to practice slowly and get absolutely nothing done.

The reason slow practice works is because it affords people the opportunity to listen carefully to the sounds and feel and refine the motions they're making at the piano.

Developing one's musicianship and technique is a *CREATIVE ACTIVITY*. You have to have imagination and be observant.

Beyond that, you also need to spend time at the piano. Lots of it. You have to sit at the piano for hours and hours and hours and work on stuff. It's nice when it's efficient, but you have to do it even when you're not being efficient. Tired? Tough. Arms hurt? Figure out what you're doing wrong and fix it. Stuck? Get advice from a teacher. Just finished up a fantastic 6 hour practice session. Good for you; do it again tomorrow, the next day, and the next day.

It's also about habit. If you rely on passion or liking your repertoire to fuel your practice, you'll never make it. Nobody is 100% passionate about everything they're playing all the time. If you want to develop a great technique, then you have to be able to work *EVEN WHEN YOU DON'T WANT TO*. (This is true for most complex endeavors - I don't know a single successful lawyer, doctor, scientist, writer, visual artist, or businessman who didn't spend a significant amount of time working when they didn't want to. You work for the goal, not because it's fun every moment.

Put another way, it's easy to fall in love with a Rachmaninoff concerto and make big plans to do "whatever it takes" to learn it. It's much, much, MUCH harder to keep working when the honeymoon period is over (this is why self-taught amateurs tend to fail and one of the reasons a teacher is so important. A good teacher and weekly lessons gives you an incentive and reason to practice even when you don't want to. Contrary to popular belief, having a teacher isn't just about the advice they give, it's about inspiration and accountability.)

Hope there's something interesting in all of that. Happy practicing!

I think practice habits are important. If practicing 2 - 3 hours a day, for-real practice, is just part of your routine and it's something you do whatever else comes up and however much excited or frustrated you feel about your music, then you just end up getting stuff done in the long term.

Set aside that block of time and steel yourself for working through some challenges and you'll probably see results. Larry Bird had a great three point shot, and probably one of the reasons his shot was so good is because he spent 2 hours each day making the shot from different angles on the three point line. Like, try for shot, try again, make shot, move 2 inches, try for shot again.

I'm not an expert on virtuoso technique, but there's a reason the greats tout slow practice. And scales and arpeggios. It's not rocket science, but it is lots and lots of hours of serious work. And playing from an earnest inner place. To me, real greatness is just a big brew of hard work and a spiritual human lightness thing shining through because you have the technical tools to be able to express yourself and the humanity to have something meaningful to say and share with the world.

I thought the OP clearly obviously unquestionably beyond the shadow of a doubt certainly meant what you thought, not the other thing that some people are saying, and that's what I still think -- unless he didn't, and then I don't.

He did say "virtuoso", which in itself of course is the thing that you and Joel say. However it is possible that he meant what the others said.

Well then it's also possible he meant becoming a hairdresser, or dermatologist, or centerfielder....

Let's take a look....


It's hard for me to see that as meaning anything but what Joel thought. Especially because of the triple ??? question marks and !!! exclamation marks.

I have met MANY people in real life who don't know what virtuoso really means and just think it means very good/outstanding.
(See also Polyphonist's post.)

And it even sounds like you're not kidding....

Sounds pretty odd.

I have just noticed that the OP later clarified what he meant:

What is the best way to maximize one's piano abilities?!?

OK!
Just goes to show that one word says it all: You never know.
Good job by everyone who got it right.

It's still hard for me to see how people could think "virtuoso" means that. But it is what it is.

Ugh...every post these days seems to devolve into meta discussions and semantic sparring.

If there's one thing about virtuosi, it's that they'd rather practice than sit around thinking about what "virtuoso" means.

I didn't spend any time thinking about what it means -- I know what it means, and it's not this.

I agree with both of these statements

--

Guys, 'virtuoso' is not a word with room for interpretation. It's very specific.

It depends on what your definition of "is" is..

Oh, and thank you for the other, longer post. Couldn't have agreed more (or said it any better).

I will add one thought (in the form of one of my favorite quotes) that I think thrums through your post, but you didn't explicitly mention:

"In order to be great, you must first be willing to give up being good."

This idea underlines everything Kreisler said. It's not just about practice, but practicing correctly. It's not about being able to play a piece, but about finding that nuance and perfecting it. It's not about being able to play "almost" perfectly even, or "almost" at the right dynamic, or getting it right "almost" every time. It's about taking what's good, breaking it down, finding what's wrong, fixing it, and putting it all back together again to create something better. Then, you repeat. Repeat. Repeat as many times as it takes until you get to something great. (And then, the next level is--there is still something greater to aspire to.)

In this endeavor, one must always seek to improve not only one's technical ability, but also one's ability to develop and grow. This is a lifelong pursuit of perfection, an undertaking in which the bad news is, you will most assuredly fall short (because true perfection cannot be achieved). And you MUST love the journey to reach that goal (because you will never actually reach the goal). Will you love every step you take? No. The one in the muck, or the twisted ankle, you will not enjoy. But those setbacks won't stop you from taking another step, and another, until you run out of days with which you can take steps (throw in the quote in my signature line here).

So, to that end, you have taken an appropriate first step -- asking questions. The next step is to get your technique "right". And what I mean by that is simply this: ask yourself two questions:

1. Do I experience pain when I play?
2. Am I playing the way I would like to be playing?

If #1 is a yes, stop what you're doing and seek expert advice immediately. You may cause more damage than you know. #1 aside, if #2 is a no, then there is an issue with your technique that is causing it. Technique is built upon movement, so if there is a technique issue, that really means there is a movement issue.

It is impossible to describe every single movement you need to make, but there are some basic ones (up, down, left, right, in, out, axial left/right sometimes called "rotation", and axial up/down), and a good teacher will be able to help there.

So, in terms of concept, put the "big picture" in your head, and then drill down into each vertical to find the gaps. Once you've found them, close them by any means available to you.

you have to work intelligently, obsessively, possibly as many four hours a day on just technical exercises (according to Sara Davis Buechner) or practice as many as 10-12 hours a day overall with a large percentage still on technique (various accounts of Liszt), and you have to be persistent

Mr. Pickle, one of these days, I aspire to write something you quote in one of these posts.

This might not make any sense...

Practising slowly has no effect if you aren't "careful".

For me, practising slowly is like practising fast but in slow motion.
This might sound obvious but I will try to explain.
When you play a piece fast, you don't have time to make big movements for example: shifting hand positions and picking up fingers way too high.
So summing it up: you need to be aware of the speed you're going to play the piece at, so that you can be economical with your movements when practising slowly as that will make a difference when you play it up to speed.

I think many of the last 20 or so posts have all but forgotten about the need for a great teacher to explain/teach technique. Although the OP still hasn't even told us about his present level, my impressions is he may be a relative beginner on the piano, and that means there is tons for him to be taught about technique in order for any practice he does to be on the right kind of things as opposed to being highly inefficient or even a waste of time.

Start at age 4.

I don't think it's a requirement, but it certainly is a catalyst that acts both as an accelerant, and to vastly improve your chances of success.

PS, did you miss where I wrote this:

My take on the teacher issue:

I've met a lot of pianists in my life, and the number of expert pianists I've met who did not have regular instruction at some point in their lives is Zero.

A lot of amateurs seem to believe that they can get the same thing a teacher could give them from various sources on the internet - here, YouTube, whatever, but in 10 years of reading these forums, not once has a self-taught pianist posted a video of themselves demonstrating expert level well-rounded musicianship. Occasionally someone will have shoved the notes of some fairly difficult piece into their hands by brute force and repetition, but that's about it. (Not to minimize the feat - it's impressive to learn a bravura arrangement of Final Fantasy or whatever, but cramming one piece into your hands doesn't make you a pianist any more than my installing my own car battery and headlights makes me a mechanic.)