Was Horowitz’s Piano The Equivalent Of Bonds’ Steroids?

“Although it’s true that tweaking a piano is not illegal, hardly like ingesting a banned substance, one effect resembles that of steroids. According to ‘Game of Shadows,’ the recent bestseller that blew the whistle on Bonds, one of the properties of steroids is that they can reduce the effects of fatigue, permitting ballplayers to ignore pain and concentrate on hitting or throwing. A looser action on a keyboard does something similar: You can play runs and scales faster and for a longer period of time with less muscle fatigue. In that sense, you could say that Horowitz’s instrument was like a piano on steroids.”