What: Noriko Ogawa in recital
Where and when: Auckland Museum, tonight at 8pm; Academy of Performing Arts, University of Waikato, Hamilton, Friday at 8pm
What: Noriko Ogawa with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra
Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, Thursday at 8pm
Japanese pianist Noriko Ogawa bubbles with excitement on the eve of her first visit to our country, telling me proudly that her "best favourite winter coat" is New Zealand sheepskin.
Tonight Ogawa gives the final recital in Auckland Museum's Fazioli series - a programme she repeats in Hamilton next Friday. And there's more.
On Thursday she plays Schumann with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, no doubt with the style that had one critic describing her as "five foot nothing of petite warmth" who "attacks the piano as if she has a black belt in the white keys".
She says her third place in the 1987 Leeds International Piano Competition was the ultimate career catalyst.
"I'd won some competitions in Japan as a schoolgirl but nothing came of it," she says. "I went on to have some time in the United States as a frustrated, shy student but I needed someone to push me out there. Getting into the competition scene was the quickest way."
Ogawa is now one of the premier pianists recording for the Swedish BIS label and a woman with a prodigious concerto repertoire - who else could take over in a performance of the Rachmaninov First with only 24 hours notice as she did in 2003 with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales?
Talk of Thursday's Schumann Concerto occasions a sigh. "It's probably the second or third concerto that I learned, but I don't get so many opportunities to play it. The piano and orchestra create the music very much together, like chamber music, right from the start.
"We can't do without each other," she laughs. "And the pianist doesn't have to wait two to three minutes to come in."
Ogawa particularly enjoys playing to "children and other people who find it difficult to come to concert halls" and her long-running Jamie's Concerts series are targeted at the families of autistic children (she lived with a severely autistic boy, Jamie, when she was a student lodging with an English family).
"The mothers and families can relax after a concert, then they return home feeling cheerful and hopefully the autistic children get these vibrations from them."
Ogawa's New Zealand recitals run from Beethoven, Debussy and Mussorgsky to the Japanese composer Yoshiro Kanno.
Her many Debussy recordings are highly regarded, yet initially she was discouraged from tackling the French composer.
"When I was a child in Japan, Debussy was thought of as second-rate," she remembers. "My piano teacher told me he was for pianists with weak fingers and to concentrate on Beethoven and Liszt. But my enthusiasm never died."
Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition brings back memories of hearing Sviatoslav Richter playing the work in Tokyo when she was a toddler.
"I still remember the opening Promenade," she says. "Richter never wasted his time but just bowed, sat down and played."
Forget Ravel's flamboyant orchestration of the piece. "The original piano version can produce its own special weight. It's heavier, with its own dark, mysterious colours."
She is particularly happy to be bringing us a taste of her homeland with Yoshiro Kanno's Hikari-no-Ryushi (A Particle of Light). "I wanted to do something unique that caught something Japanese," Ogawa enthuses. "We considered using a computer, but I didn't want to have to ask for special equipment in each concert hall. I wanted something I could put in my handbag.
"Then Yoshiro rang this Nambu bell in front of me and I fell in love with it. So I play that, along with slightly spooky melodies from ancient Gagaku court music that haven't changed for a thousand years. And, although I don't know as much as I should about Japanese music, somehow I can feel that these sounds are in my blood."
