Over-Ambitious Efforts
In your practice it is often well to try music that is just a wee bit too difficult. But when you are playing for an audience, no matter how large or how small, keep your program well within the compass of your powers. You will gain in ease by looking out for this point, for when you are playing music that is out of your proper capacity you will be a prey to uneasiness, and, if you should make a mistake, it will be hard for you to catch yourself up again.
Also, when you are playing music that taxes your technic, it will be harder for you to do justice to the meaning and intention of the composer. And this is an injustice which none of us would willingly do. You will find that your playing will give more genuine pleasure if you are quite at your ease in the delivery of your pieces. Better a comparatively simple composition well rendered than a more difficult one played raggedly and with evident effort.
There is a large repertoire of music to choose from, music that will give you pleasure to study and play, and your audience pleasure to hear. And beware how large a part mere personal ambition holds in your playing. If you merely wish to show how finely YOU can perform, regardless of anything else, you are in the class with the juggler throwing glass balls up in the air and catching them behind his back. This, in itself is not art, but mechanics.
Be content, therefore, to play music for the pleasure of the listener—not to exploit your technic. And the chances are that you—as well as your audience—will get more joy and progress out of music than if you made a "stunt" of it instead of an art.