Taupe. Dull ocher. Light gray. These are the exterior colors available in a new housing development I passed in the outer suburbs of Des Moines. The houses are attached and identically sized. There are slight, symmetrically-occurring variations in the facades. Some people 
covet these abodes. No chance the neighbors will decide to paint purple — not allowed! No chance that someone will display a prized lawn gargoyle, or replace the standard-issue white enamel porch light with copper. (“Dear Association Member, please remove immediately.”)
In the end-of-the-year-best-of lists, and best-of-the-decade lists, I was perplexed to see so many of the same recordings, same movies, same opinions. Of course, certain art is so wonderful, so powerful, that it will impress and speak to many people. But the sameness of opinion and the prevalence of received opinion that dominates classical music is killing. It makes us matter less. It makes music less alive and less powerful.
My father sometimes said: “If two people have exactly the same opinion, then there’s no use for one of them.” Let’s include pianists. There’s something to be said for learning the conventions and tastes of an era, or a repertoire, or a region. But that’s the beginning of a life’s work as a musician, not an end.
In the repertoires of aspiring classical pianists, the extreme prevalence of certain pieces (often pinnacles of technical difficulty) is almost unbelievable. Once again, Beethoven’s “Appassionata,” Chopin’s Fourth Ballade, Liszt’s Sonata… The impact on the listener is certain: It becomes increasingly hard even to hear this music. The mind and ear slip into recognition: “Oh, that’s Beethoven’s Opus 109.” And then, the very particular, moment-by-moment hearing of what takes place in the music in every instant, what it says, feels like, even exactly how it sounds physically — these specifics hardly register.
After hearing hundreds of young pianists play Beethoven’s “Appassionata” in the last two years, I can’t really remember any details of any of the performances, even performances I recall liking very much. In contrast, the sole student who played Beethoven’s Opus 54 in an audition last year is clear in my mind. I remember the performance — not just my reductive opinion of it — in fairly vivid detail.
When you write ‘The impact on the listener is certain: It becomes increasingly hard even to hear this music‘ do you mean it becomes increasingly hard to listen to this music?, just the same way as when we walk into a supermarket or an elevator, we hear the music but do not listen to it…
In a way, I feel that it is the very conservatories and Arts institutions that foster this over-and-overness of the repertoire. Why can’t we go the other way? Personally, there are pieces I don’t want to hear again ever. Appassionata is one of these pieces, so is Schumann Papillons or Chopin First Ballade. These pieces have been outplayed, everything that’s left now is the score.