Mugging musicians should be boiled in oil and dropped like broken rocks on to the place below. No quantity of mercy need be shown.

Has any rational explanation ever been given to the need for the aerobic gyration indulged in by some musicians? They detract from the music in their silly quest to convey to the audience how hard they are working, how deeply they are feeling, how exquisite their perception is.

"You can see how sensitive I am. Join with me in my sensitivity."

Stephen Johnson, in some liner notes for a recording by Rachmaninoff, quotes Stravinsky and Schonberg: "A six-and-a-half foot scowl, a tall, dour, lank, unsmiling figure with its seamed face and head of close-cropped (almost shaved) hair invariably reminded the public of a convict on the loose."

The pianist was compared to a block of wood, but his music overflowed with romantic ardor, rhythmic clarity, and energy.

He needed no distracting mannerisms to communicate to the audience.

Marc-André Hamelin has been accused of not showing emotions, of not dramatizing his evolvement in his music...and so far has avoided the fatal error.

With many performers there is no need for extra musical visual comment. Bartoli, Sills, Stern, and many other splendid musicians, can simply do their stuff. On the other hand, there are those that fling themselves and their instruments about the platform in order, it seems, to impress the audience. Playing piano keys with one's nose, elbows, ears; waving a handkerchief, back arched, head thrown back (perhaps hoping to find inspiration or notes in the flies), sawing away at the fiddle, divert attention from where it belongs...on the music.

Of course singers may need some gestures to help get air into the lungs; String and wind players can influence notes by breath control and application of various muscles gestures...but when a piano key is plunked down, that is pretty much it. No amount of wrist bending, arm swiveling, shoulder skirmishing, or nose nudging is going to change the result.

A recent broadcast of Barenboim playing the first Tchaikovsky concerto was a class act all the way around. Concentrated, focused, no movement of which to speak, and splendid playing. This can be compared with another TV appearance around the same time and with the same piece by a nameless piano player, which made all cheap, vulgar and rather nasty movements. Perhaps these in-your-face performances are influenced by sports figures and sit-com actors.

One supposes that the musician's advisors have so little trust in the public taste that it is necessary to dramatize, to lead them to the "correct understanding."

Maybe drawing and quartering the miscreants is a better idea.