Who: Michael Houstoun with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra
Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, Thursday at 8pm
Michael Houstoun is very happy with his year so far, giving recitals for the country's growing festival circuit, accompanying at the Michael Hill and Adam competitions and a gig with Mike Nock at the Wellington Jazz Festival.
It's back to Beethoven next Thursday with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra and the composer's Fourth Concerto is "so wonderful it just seems to get better each time".
"The work doesn't change, of course," Houstoun adds. "But you bring more to it with all the little changes in your life."
He finds it the most elusive of Beethoven's five concertos.
"In the first movement, the pianist plays lots and lots and lots of notes, yet it's not at all agitated; the themes are essentially quiet and gentle.
"It's very hard to create the right atmosphere," he says. "To play all those notes but still sound relaxed, as if this is all beautiful ornamentation rather than driving virtuosic writing."
A few days after the APO concert under Eckehard Stier, Houstoun repeats the same concerto with the Vector Wellington Orchestra and conductor Marc Taddei. These batonmeisters make "a huge difference", he says. Now that he is older than most of his conductors, Houstoun admits he "can usually play what I want and it's okay with them".
Nevertheless "there's no point in approaching the music with absolutely set ideas. You only have two rehearsals and, if your ideas are tricky, then you're not going to get what you want."
One of the trickiest issues with Thursday's Beethoven is finding the right tempo for its opening movement and that is where the conductor's expertise is appreciated.
"You don't want him to push you, and you don't want him to drag," Houstoun says. "You don't want him to change the speed all the time. Agreeing on those things is a subtle process, felt rather than explained."
He recalls one potential disaster when he played the Brahms Second, under Franz-Paul Decker in the Auckland Town Hall.
"The opening horn solo was way too fast," Houstoun remembers. "Almost twice the speed that I played the piece. So I had to do a huge thing with my very first phrase to bend the whole thing back into line. There was no way I could do it at his speed, without being forced into playing really badly."
Having secured his reputation in contemporary repertoire with Inland, his award-winning album of New Zealand music, he now carefully assesses just how much work might be entailed learning something new.
"It's not the difficulty of playing a piece but the amount of time it takes to prepare," Houstoun says.
"John Psathas might be hard to play but the work may be only 10 minutes long. If something's 20 minutes to play and 20 months to learn, I'm not going to bother."
As for the eternal mysteries of interpretation, "I just learn the music and play it," Houstoun laughs.
And when it comes to practice, "I keep repeating and something happens," is the pianist's demystification.
"Things drop away that are not successful without my saying 'that's got to go'."
Talking repertoire and shrewd marketing, Houstoun has just recorded a spate of music, from Bach to Prokofiev, for the internet and potential downloading.
"Personally, I'm quite happy with CDs and a lot of my fans are not exactly computer savvy," Houstoun smiles.
"But that's how the younger generation gets its music."
