I love this story!

A few decades ago an eccentric conductor named Ernst Fischer was obsessed with speed, not in cars  but in music. He believed that a piece played faster wasn’t just more exciting, it could reveal hidden beauty in the notes.

One evening, Fischer invited a young violin prodigy Lila, to perform Paganini’s famously difficult Caprice No. 24. The challenge? To beat the current speed record without missing a note.

The atmosphere in the audience was electric and a music critic was timing her with a brass stopwatch. She walked onstage calm and smiling, but as the conductor raised his baton she didn’t start playing the piece faster, she played it slower.

Gasps filled the concert hall. The critic frowned and the stopwatch clicked uselessly. But something strange happened… In the slower pace, Lila uncovered little melodic phrases and harmonic tensions that no one had noticed before. The audience leaned forward and the music seemed to bloom – it was captivating.

At the end of Lila’s performance the crowd erupted into enthusiastic applause. Louder than for any ‘record breaking’ speed run. The conductor later admitted that in that moment he realized performance isn’t just about doing something quickly or efficiently, it’s about doing it so well that time itself feels irrelevant.

I’ve personally felt this in certain performances where everything just seemed ‘to flow’. Some call it ‘being in the zone’ It’s also a reminder that in both art and life, PERFORMANCE isn’t just raw speed or output. Sometimes, the highest performance comes from deliberate pacing and being in the moment.

Enjoy your journey…

Photo: Pexels-pixabay

Georg Voros is a Performance Consultant with 45+ years of top-level experience and author of two books on performance. He delivers high-impact workshops on productivity and flow, and offers tailored mentoring packages to support personal growth and achievement. Learn more at www.vorosperformance.co.uk