Walking On

Freddie Kempff is a superb pianist but he doesn't yet know how to walk on stage - or off. He comes on walking but you have the feeling that he wishes to run, as if he is putting on a sort of inner brake to prevent him accelerating. When he's sitting at the keyboard he is at ease and master of his instrument: this week I heard him play Beethoven's Appasionata sonata perfectly it seemed to me and some pieces by Schumann which I was not at all familiar with. At the end he almost rushed off.
Must be over ten years ago I saw Vlado Perlemuter give a piano recital in Cardiff. He could hardly walk and needed someone to escort him on and off stage. But looking him up in Wikipedia I see that he lived from 1904 to 2002 which means he must have been in his eightees or maybe even his ninetees, so it's it's little wonder that he needed help to get around. Yet when he played he was transformed from Old Age Pensioner into young, brilliant artiste. Defying his age and look of frailty he ended the recital with an encore - Chopin's Revolutionary Study, no less.
I recall hearing a critic once saying that comedians need to have or develop a characteristic walk. Jack Benny had one: a rather exaggerated lifting of the arms while he strided up to the microphone. It wasn't a natural gait but a sort of prop; it said "here I am with the walk you recognise". Bob Hpe walked on in a leisurely way as if he was, well, on a golf course.
I once interviewed Dickie Henderson; after we had quaffed quite a few gins and whiskies I watched him, from the wings, walk on stage for his evening performance; he did it as casually as Bob Hope and did not waver intoxicatingly at all (unlike yours truly who almost fell down the stairs).
There's a Welsh pianist who comes on as if he is attending a funeral and a French pianist who walks on as if he's on his own in a park not giving a damn about anyone; but when he plays he is magnificent.