KEY POINTS:
Some will know the Argentinian pianist Nelson Goerner through his many fine CDs. He has recorded Liszt for Cascavelle, Chopin for EMI and - one for the curiosity corner - Busoni's Indian Fantasy for Chandos.
Tomorrow night he is playing Brahms with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra and his Saturday recital extends to Liszt, Schumann and Janacek.
The eternal problem of reconciling recording studio and concert hall interests Goerner. "We are all conditioned by what we have heard on CD," he says.
"People go to concerts with the expectation of hearing the perfect concert and this cannot be." Although emphatic on that point, he adds: "It is clear that those of us who experience music in the flesh are extremely privileged."
Talking pianists, he goes into rapture over names like Horovitz, Rubinstein and Corot. "These men were willing to take risks. They weren't afraid to fail. And you can always recognise them after a few bars. They had their own sound."
Goerner catches my interest with this business of risk-taking in art, but quickly redefines it as spontaneity. "It is so important that everything cannot be planned," he says. "A concerto should be an adventure and not something taken for granted."
He remembers when he was called in at the last moment to tackle the Rachmaninov Third, under Vassily Sinaisky. "I worried a lot at the time, but something else took over and the concert turned out very well."
In Auckland, Goerner is working with the American conductor Christian Knapp. Looking forward to their first rehearsal, he is hoping, as usual, for a colleague who has "a real comprehension of the music and understands what I am trying to do. After all, we are all looking for something behind those notes.
"The Brahms Concerto is one of the most powerful piano concertos ever written. It has such gravity but it is also so refined.
"I was very impressed with Claudio Arrau, who said this work was like the sound of the final judgment and I think he was very accurate."
Goerner points out once more how this is a score of sharp contrasts. "It is such dramatic music but at the same there is such thoughtfulness there."
Goerner has also put a lot of thought into his Saturday recital programme, which features two sonatas by Liszt and Janacek, separated by Schumann's Humoresken.
Liszt has always been a favourite and Goerner made his name 21 years ago by carrying off first prize at the Franz Liszt Competition in Buenos Aires.
With the composer's B minor Sonata, "it's a matter of making the structure of the piece clear because it is this which conditions the meaning of the work", Goerner says.
"Otherwise it comes across as a rhapsody full of flourishes and ornamentation that don't hold together.
"The Janacek Sonata is very tragic, with its vision of death and hopelessness.
"It's not depressing but you feel the weight of fate hanging over it."
In between, what better than the Schumann Humoresken for light relief. "This is such a neglected work," Goerner says, "and one of Schumann's most wonderful pieces. It's about love, full of humour, and the perfect link between the other two pieces."
For a moment I draw Goerner out of the concert hall to admit his admiration for the jazz pianist Art Tatum, whom he envies for "the exceptional amount of freedom he has, something we don't have that much in our classical world.
"At one time it was something all the great composers lived with, but not so much lately.
"I don't say we can't get this freedom back, but it becomes more and more difficult to do so."
