KEY POINTS:
He carried off the Michael Hill International Violin Competition in 2005 and returned last year to play Bruch with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra as well as touring with Michael Houstoun in a recital programme that spanned from Schubert and Faure to kitschy Heifetz encores.
Feng Ning, the 26-year-old Chinese violinist who also took two prizes at last year's Premio Paganini, says this competition and the Michael Hill were "the perfect end of an era. I have been in the competition business for seven years now; I've done enough and learned enough. It's like lottery - even if you prepare 200 per cent, you might lose a string and everything is gone."
Talking Paganini (Ning will play the composer's I Palpiti in recital next Monday), he is a fan.
"Paganini may not be a composer on the level of Bach or Brahms, but he has a special talent for writing beautiful melodies," he points out. "And his music is so damn difficult. When I was young I spent so much time just figuring out how to play it."
In fact, one feels the greatest buzz in winning the Premio Paganini Competition may have been playing the maestro's own violin, known as "Il Cannone" (The Cannon).
"I never dreamed that one day I would play this instrument," Ning says. "Its tone is so huge and deep, you feel the sound is coming out of the violin like a bullet. It seems to have a magic power."
Ning is looking forward to reuniting with Houstoun and confides that, at first, he had been nervous about playing with such an established concert pianist.
"Some pianists are so individual they find it difficult to co-operate, but not so with Michael. Also, his experience as a solo pianist means he is a solid partner in sonatas and bigger works."
There are three sonatas on Monday's programme including the Richard Strauss which Ning describes as "a concerto for violin and piano, right up there with the Franck and Beethoven Kreutzer."
The other two are the Mozart E minor and Poulenc's 1942 Sonata, which this ardent admirer of the French composer asserts is every bit as good as the more popular Sonatas of Debussy and Ravel.
Touring last year, the two musicians passed the time during their many hours of travel by sharing dreams.
"Michael was having difficulty practising one of the passages he was playing," Ning explains.
"He went to bed and in his sleep he dreamed there was this fantastic fingering for that passage and it worked out perfectly ... in the dream. When he woke up and opened the piano lid, he found it was impossible."
Did his own dreams have any Freudian implications?
"I dreamed I was trying to run but, like someone running in water, I couldn't move my legs quickly enough. Maybe someone is telling me I have to practise more."
Tomorrow night's Saint-Saens Concerto is certainly the sort of challenge that might cause nightmares to an unwary soloist.
"This is very much the composition of a French composer - it's not light music, but not as heavy as Brahms either. The difficulty comes with the various mood changes and finding the perfect balance between the emotional extremes."
PERFORMANCE
Who: Feng Ning with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra
Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, tomorrow 8pm
And: Feng Ning in recital with Michael Houstoun
Where and when: Auckland Town Hall Concert Chamber, Monday 6.30pm
