KEY POINTS:
It is a luxury in these parts to experience a visiting artist as both concerto soloist and in solo recital but this week, Chinese pianist Jin Ju makes her New Zealand debut doing just that.
Tomorrow night she tackles Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra in the first concert of its Vero Aotea series; on Saturday she is first of the Auckland Museum's Fazioli international piano recitals.
I catch her on the phone from Florence, where she is just hours away from boarding her plane.
Florence, she says, is the perfect place to live. "It's not only a magical city, but it's here that the piano was invented."
The 30-year-old pianist is a seasoned globetrotter, especially on the competition circuit, where her biggest success was third placing in the 2002 Tchaikovsky Piano Competition.
For Jin Ju, this was quite an experience.
"By this stage, there couldn't be any technical problems and you had to focus totally on interpretation. The judges were mainly interested in how you used your personality to approach the music."
Her Moscow success led to her acquiring an agent, along with further engagements, but she admits that "even before this I was already playing 30 to 35 concerts a year".
Although her roots will always be in her home country, after 20 years of study in China, living in Europe has given her a new understanding of European culture and the European way of thinking.
"Living here, where Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin once lived," she says, "I feel I've become closer to them and their music."
When we talk pianos and Fazioli in particular, it turns out that Paolo Fazioli is a personal friend.
"He has achieved the Italian miracle. His instruments are to the piano what Ferrari is to the car. He makes the keyboard very easy to play.
"You don't have to work very hard to get so many different beautiful sounds. "Because he himself is a sound engineer, he did a lot of research on other piano labels and made lots of specific changes. If you close your eyes and listen to a Steinway or a Fazioli you cannot really tell which is which.
"And that," says Jin Ju, who is a Steinway artist herself, "means a lot."
Jin Ju opens her Saturday recital with Czerny's La Recordanza, which she says is "not like the endless finger exercises that most people associate with Czerny. Horovitz used to play this piece a lot and it's full of humour and life."
The second half will feature all four Ballades by Chopin and Jin Ju says she likes to play the package. "These four pieces cover 10 years of Chopin's life and, when you play them together, you can see him changing over those years."
Perhaps the most eager audience member on Saturday will be Auckland Museum director Rodney Wilson, whose initiative it was to undertake this recital series.
It is a showcase, says Wilson, for the museum's new 200-seat auditorium, which will complement the institution's Castle Instrument Collection and its leading role in ethnomusicology.
"The space is semicircular, with a steeply pitched floor which means that visually it is unbelievable," Wilson explains. "You can be in the back row off to one side and still see the performer as if you were sitting in his or her lap."
With the museum's new Fazioli - "which Michael Houstoun thinks is one of the finest instruments in the country," adds Wilson - Jin Ju's recital will be "the first manifestation of a resolve to have a good music programme here".
Performance
What: Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra
Where: Aotea Centre, tomorrow, 8pm
And: Jin Ju in recital, Auckland Museum, Sat 8pm
