What is your favorite part about being a pianist?

I'm with Rodney - I think what I love most about playing the piano is the amazingly rich and almost immeasurably wide literature that exists for this instrument. Bill McGlaughlin calls classical music "a bottomless treasure chest"; that term applies just as much to the piano literature alone. I am perfectly content that the number of pieces I will ever be able to truly master in my lifetime is vanishingly small compared to the ones I merely explore and happily fumble my way through, and even smaller compared to all the pieces I only dream of and fantasize about playing. 

Playing my beautiful Steinway B, signed on the plate by Henry Z Steinway.  The sound is magnificent.  The piano will outlive me, so I see myself as caring for it for the next person to enjoy.  

This is a great question!   

I think I enjoy the struggle of learning.  At first, I play it poorly, but little by little I learn it.  By the time I have learned the piece, I have nearly forgotten how much I struggled.  Piano teaches me to persist and push on..

It helps me release stress, express my emotions, and cry. All good things. And it makes me happy. I started learning 2 weeks ago. 

The ability to fly free with your music after the tedious learning period...

There's something about the vibration and energy that passes into the hands of a pianist and ultimately to the soul that I can't describe other than it's magical.

No matter what you are doing on your instrument, or how you do it, you are always going to a wonderful place, where words are never enough and never necessary.

I enjoy actively playing and learning but a huge benefit for me is my mental game when I'm away from the piano. It gives me a positive challenge to think about, whether it's figuring out a fingering, thinking about a chord progression, or just enjoying a melody.

My favorite part is knowing there is a vast repertoire to discover and learn.

I am so glad I was steered away from being a concert pianist. I would have hated it because I prefer to choose my repertoire and my audience. I play to impact my audience emotionally, to touch their soul and impart joy...to leave a little lighter than when they arrived. So there are many pieces that I will never attempt to play because I do not have an affinity with them; they do not speak to me.

The piano expresses a language...It has the same rule governed behavior that human language has..It has tones...we have speech sounds. It has phrases..we have syntax..It has dynamics and articulations...we have suprasegmental features...all work together to express a meaning through emotion...we have semantics...a beautiful instrument to speak through...

Being able to imitate other instruments, play complex melodies, and much more that the normal person / other instrument players can't. For example, Liszt played all nine of Beethoven's 9 symphonies on the piano, transcribing all the orchestra lines onto the piano.

Because the nature of music is inherently invisible, operating purely through air, the piano affords one of the most tactile ways of producing it. This is my favorite part, because it is almost a “creatio ex nihilo”, a creation from nothing. While this might be true of each instrument, the piano creates more, and for me, has the capability of the most magical moments. 

The repertoire. We're blessed with all this great music, more so than any other instrument