Analyzing music with your fingers

Roy Howard's talk "French Music in the Footsteps of Chopin" (20 Oct) opened up a different window for me with regard to analysis. He presented a series of examples showing how various French composers such as Faure, Chabrier, and Debussy 'borrowed' (or were inspired by) piano-writing ideas from Chopin. What was fascinating was that many of these borrowings/allusions were not so much audible or perceivable on the score as they were obvious to the pianist when playing the pieces. It was as if (in Howat's words) Chopin's musical ideas were refracted through the prism of the creative minds of these later composers. Such an analytical approach would require someone like Roy Howat who has extensive familiarity with these repertoires as a performer: one might say, his fingers became his analytical eyes and ears for such analyses!