Fiddlerman said

Gordon Shumway said

I am not a fan of emoting.

It comes in many forms, some genuine and some utterly fake.

Emoting can be a substitute for musical expression. Clearly you have to make music first and emote (if you must) second.

Even in Vengerov's case I feel his emoting isn't really all that necessary for the sound he produces, although he is genuine.

Plenty of top performers don't, and don't need to, emote, and emoting is usually for the audience's benefit. Even a pianist can emote for the audience where it has zero musical effect. You can pretend to vibrato on a piano key. It does almost nothing, but the audience sees it and goes with it.  

For me, if I hold back expressions I am faking a bit.  I'm not in the same ballpark as a guy like Vengerov. It's like trying real hard not to laugh or cry. But I do understand what you are saying. I had plenty of colleagues that felt the same way as you do.

  

There was no point in raising this topic from the dead, but I was musing on Jacqueline du Pré and I realised, the way to understand my view of emoting is to ask, is it a cause or a result? In other words, in a musician such as du Pré (or Santana, who was mentioned earlier) emoting is a result of their musicality. But some people are taught that emoting can cause musicality. No!