Believe your ears: a whole-brain approach to piano playing

We're probably all familiar with the traditional format of instrumental lessons: these usually begin with learning to read notation and playing technical exercises. This was the way I was taught and the style that I adopted when I became a teacher myself. I continued to use it until I began to read literature that resonated with my sense that perhaps this method was not offering an adequate experience. Pupils were not learning to engage their aural imagination or listening ahead as they played. This prompted a major re-think.

It seems to me that our culture relies heavily on the idea that ‘seeing is believing’, and therefore this is how young brains are conditioned. We often hear people using the expression ‘the mind's eye’, but when did anyone ever talk about ‘the mind's ear’?