Weiyin Chen knew nothing could stop her from being a pianist by the ripe old age of four. That was when she first heard concertos by Mozart and Beethoven on records and would play them on the family piano. Four years later, she told her parents: "I have to go to Juilliard School in New York." Three years on, and she was there.
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Back in Taiwan, she told one of world's most eminent pianists that she needed to study with him. Two years later, she was sitting in his studio playing Beethoven sonatas.
If Weiyin Chen sounds pushy, she quickly re-states her story. No, she hadn't played the complete concertos, only the melodic line. She hadn't told her mother "I have to go", but "I want to go to Juilliard". And when she met world-famous pianist Leon Fleisher, she didn't exactly say she needed to study with him. Rather, he heard her play in Taiwan and was so impressed that he gave her his New York phone number on a piece of paper.
"I still have that paper," she says. "It's one of my prized possessions."
Having coffee in midtown New York with the 30-year-old Weiyin Chen is an exercise in enthusiasm. The young pianist describes playing Edward Grieg's Piano Concerto in Bangkok last December with spirited emotions. She depicts being taught by Fleisher and fellow luminary Richard Goode as an experience "on Cloud Nine".
She can't hide her excitement at playing a work written for her by the celebrated Marc Neikrug, or her recordings of Schubert, Schumann and composer Steven Holochwost. In fact, while her name is not up in the galaxies yet with other young pianists, she has no regrets at all.
"I have never rushed things," she says. "Leon Fleisher told me that everything takes time, that when things are ready, they are ready."
Not that Weiyin has taken breaks in her career, which did indeed begin when she first saw a piano. And while her family of surgeons _ father, mother and brother _ were surprised that she didn't want to follow their careers, they did everything to make her desires come true.
At the age of 13, she actually did go to Juilliard School, where for five years she studied with the most demanding teachers. She was technically suited to play internationally, but limited her concert-going, knowing that she needed more than technique.
"I gave a recital at Rockefeller University in New York, and worked even then with orchestras in Taiwan," she says.
"And with my love of chamber music, I've played with ensembles around the world.
"In fact, with chamber music, I can become myself. Giving recitals, I can measure myself by the music. With orchestras, like in Bangkok, it's me against them. But in chamber music, each player is individual. We have our own personalities, but we have to work with other individuals at the same time."
That means famed events such as the Saratoga Music Festival, Festspiele Mecklenburg Vorpommern and Switzerland's Verbier Festival, where she was asked to perform in Bangkok.
Yet all of her studies and performances were a prelude to her work with Leon Fleisher, who the authoritative book The Art Of The Piano calls "musicianship without pretentiousness or metaphysics. Whose Second Concerto by Beethoven is the best ever recorded". It was Fleisher, who Weiyin, herself described as "a thinking pianist", wanted to meet above all others.
At a festival in Taiwan, she played Prokofiev's massive Piano Sonata No. 6 with its almost impossible combination of repeated notes, sweeping runs, percussive chords (played with the fists) and passages screaming with violence. Fleisher was attending, and that was where Weiyin received his number, and later met him at the Peabody Institute, and where she began her musicianship.
"Technically I learned so much _ even things like using my arm like a violinist with a bow, to make a different sense of the work. I realised in my playing that I had to be a musician, not a pianist.
"Leon," she says, "gives the sense of calm. The first time I worked with him it is was if I'd known him a long time. He gives me the sense of honesty and sincerity in music, then when you understand the truth of a piece of music, it is impossible to hide it."
Among the great classics, she also studied the Grieg Piano Concerto, which she will play with the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra. To most of us, this is an old warhorse, a work which has been heard so much that it needs no explanation.
"No, no, no," she says. "I realised that this is a misunderstood work. So many pianists play this with great bravura, with total excitement. And yes, it has that. But Leon Fleisher taught me to think about the music before playing it. And now I see that this music is so rich, it has so much emotion.
"I went to Grieg's birthplace, Norway, with my mother. Not for concerts, but to see the fjords, the mountains, the places which Grieg loved so much. And that's when I recognised that this was not simply a concerto to show the pianist's talent. It's a piece that makes a serious attempt at discovering nature."
Until recently, Weiyin Chen, though living in New York, travelled frequently to Taiwan where Fleisher conducted her in Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 1. But her recitals have taken her around the US and Europe, and China several times. Her other orchestral collaborations haves included Shanghai Philharmonic and the Hong Kong Philharmonic under the direction of Edo de Waart. And she is most enthusiastic about her debut in New York next year with a work written especially for her by Marc Neikrug.
When it comes to the newest crop of pianists from China, Weiyin Chen, so enthusiastic about other things, is diplomatically circumspect, hinting that perhaps their music suffers from a lack of knowledge outside of music.
"Leon taught me long ago that we are part of the entire cosmos, and all of our experiences add to our understanding of our music," she explains.
Part of that is being in New York, with its ample opportunities for concerts, movies, theatre, and simply enjoying the energy. When not giving concerts, she takes advantage of that, as well as cooking, yoga and daily jogging.
"[Ten kilometres] each morning," she says. "Which I hope to do in Bangkok the week I'm there as well."
New York joggers inevitably wear headphones, listening to their favourite tunes, so one must ask Weiyin Chen whether she listens to Beethoven or Bartok or Grieg or Bach or Schubert.
"None of the above," she laughs. "I never wear headphones when I run.
"The breezes, the trees, the sounds of the city are music enough for me."
- The Royal Celebration Concert, conducted by Peter Biloen with Weiyin Chen on the piano, will take place on Dec 12 at Thailand Cultural Centre.
- Tickets cost 300-1,500 baht from Thai Ticket Major. Visit www.thaiticketmajor.com for more.
