She's only 19, has never spent a day at school, and has been accepted to study at the prestigious Royal Academy of Music in London.
Hannah-Elizabeth Teoh was brought up an only child on a farm at Kaitoke, near Wanganui. She was home schooled and started piano lessons at five.
Ever since then it has been her ambition to have a career in piano performance. She said that was not because she especially likes performing but because she loves music, and performance is the culmination.
Earlier this month Miss Teoh was asked to perform the Ross Harris piano concertino with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in Wellington Town Hall. The result was recorded by Radio New Zealand's concert programme.
"It was fantastic playing with a professional orchestra," she said.
For the past six years she's studied under Judith Clark, the former head of keyboard studies at Victoria University, and she's been a student of the New Zealand School of Music Academy Programme for five years, passing exams with distinction.
Miss Teoh said she "wasn't that keen" on being in an ordinary classroom and was a correspondence school pupil during her primary years.
Correspondence was flexible, allowing her to spend six months of the year with her father in Singapore.
Her parents are both lecturers, her father in physics and her mother a retired English lecturer. Neither are musical.
In December she auditioned successfully at four United Kingdom conservatories, and she starts study in London in September.
Before she leaves she's performing solo concerts in Wellington, Lower Hutt and Wanganui. Miss Teoh's solo concert at the Wanganui War Memorial Hall is at 2pm on June 26.
Solo concert for talented pianist
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