Performance Technique and Musicianship
The assessed overlap
Technique and musicianship are marked together because they are inseparable in performance. Technique is the reliable production of the sound you intend: posture, breath or bow control, embouchure or hand shape, articulation, intonation, and tone consistency across registers and dynamics. Musicianship is what you do with that control: phrasing, dynamic shaping, rubato, balance, and stylistic articulation.
Concepts to understand
Learn support and release (how air, weight, or arm speed creates and ends a note), intonation systems (equal temperament versus just intonation in ensembles), articulation vocabulary (staccato, legato, marcato, portato and their stylistic meanings), dynamic pacing (saving the peak for the structural climax), and phrasing arches (identifying where a phrase breathes). For keyboard and string players, know weight transfer; for wind and voice, breath management and resonance.
Traps
A common trap is a question that describes a candidate playing every phrase at the same dynamic and asks for the diagnosis - the answer is lack of dynamic shaping, not lack of technique. Another is confusing speed with facility: fast playing with uneven rhythm is a rhythmic fault. Watch for questions that assume rubato means slowing down; rubato is give and take.
Worked example
A candidate plays a lyrical slow movement but the tone thins in the upper register. The fix is not more volume but voicing and support: reduce excess pressure, maintain air or bow speed, and practise the passage in a comfortable key first. Rule of thumb: diagnose whether the fault is control (technique) or intention (musicianship) before choosing a remedy.