Today, fellow denizens of the 21st century, we have an off-beat little test to see how much of a slave to the Giant Media Machine you are.

Suppose you came across a young pianist who abjures contests as well as recording contracts, who gives only intimate recitals in small venues in his home country, and who in the spirit of the times has a web site on which he posts free video and mp3 recordings from those recitals.

Suppose further that you watch the videos and listen to the mp3s. And then you watch and listen again. And again.

You are stunned. Transfixed. You marvel at the accomplished pianism of the performances of this musician, now 20 years old. (The postings go back five years, so you see him between the ages of 15 and 20.)

It’s all there: the nearly perfect melding with the huge object that is a concert grand piano. The whole range of technique and musicality flows from his fingers seemingly effortlessly. From the most dulcet pianissimo to the most thundering climax, from percussive effects that make you sit up and think "Can a piano do that?" to soothing legatos that make you forget that the piano is a percussive instrument.

Yes, there are occasional dropped notes. But, remember, dear denizen, we are so spoiled by the artificial perfection of CDs that we forget in a live performance there are always dropped notes. But dropped notes for this young pianist are like missed putts by Tiger Woods: They happen but the talent is such that we know that they won’t happen often and they’re just not all that important when they do.

What’s not here is the big stage ego. The music’s the thing. No arms flung to the heavens, no head drooping to convey deep emotion. The raven locks are mostly still. The entire lanky body is mostly still. The music flows from somewhere within right to the fingers which, with very little show, do what few fingers have ever done on a piano keyboard.

Could you, fellow denizen, encounter such a player, without the hype of contest medals, without the big advertising and critical push following appearances in New York, London, etc., without a clamor of media voices telling you you better get on the bandwagon or you’re going to be left behind, and say, solely on the basis of what you experience in these videos, "Here is the early stage of genius"?

For example: One of the performances is of the Appassionata Sonata. Here Beethoven raises his fist to heaven and like Lear on the blasted heath will not shut up until he has had his unapologetic, wrenching, and complete say. A fiery first movement is followed by a slow movement that is first serene, then distantly troubled like a sky in late February, then serene again. The last, ferocious movement is one of human art’s great, affirmative responses to a world that negates.

After 15 minutes of playing the first two movements in which he has brilliantly negotiated the ferocious twists and turns of Beethoven’s heart, our young pianist throws himself into the challenging last movement with a fervor and at a tempo that takes your breath. Because, you see, as every pianist knows who has tried the Opus 57, there is a trap waiting at the end. After pages and pages of furious ruminations on the human lot, when it's time at last to wind everything down, Beethoven ups the ante and writes a final two pages that demand that the exhausted performer increase both tempo and volume. Which means most players hold back in the first 8 minutes of the last movement because they know what's coming and they have to keep something in reserve for those two daunting pages at the end.

Well. Our young pianist has held nothing back and, listening and watching, you tremble for him. What’s he going to do when he gets to those two pages?

The video is there, denizen, free, for you to play and see for yourself what happens.

Such is the level of playing here that one realizes, well, many things. For example, one realizes the foolish irrelevancy of all the temperamental great pianists who fret endlessly over the instrument on which they must communicate with their vaunted gods. With this young pianist, performing on a variety of instruments big and small (there’s even a video of his complete performance of the Pictures at an Exhibition… on an upright), one understands that, yes, the instrument matters, but what matters far, far more is the music, and if the performer has the music in his fingers, then it’s OK to play Mussorgsky on an upright.

His name is Serg van Gennip. Born in Russia, he lives and performs (mostly) in Holland.