Impulse purchase led to musical career

January 24 at 8 p.m.

$8-40. Kennesaw State University's Bailey Performance Center, 1000 Chastain Rd. Kennesaw. 770-423-6650. baileycenter.kennesaw.edu

When Wu Han describes a musical piece as “challenging,” you can rest assured it’s going to be a workout.

She regularly plays some of the most difficult pieces on some of the worlds brightest stages, but she says Benjamin Britten’s Piano Concerto, which she’ll be performing with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, is a special challenge.

“The difficulty is because of the technical brilliance,” she said.

“The first thing when you come on stage, in the very first two bars, you have to do all the heavy jumping, very unusual patterns of octave jumps, immediately. And then it’s really one trick after another. It’s filled with double scales and glissandos. And it’s fast! You really have to be in top-notch condition to carry it through.”

It is the only piano concerto written by the renowned 20th-century British composer.

Fortunately, Wu Han, 54, is a pianist in top-notch condition. She grew up in Taiwan, the daughter of Chinese immigrants who had moved to the island nation after World War II. Her parents were not musicians, though she says she grew up with a lot of singing and Chinese folk songs in the household.

An impulse purchase by her father introduced classical music to the home. “My mom sent my dad to the American GI flea market to buy a suit to go to a cousin’s wedding,” she says. “My dad, instead of buying the suit, spent the money on a turntable and a stack of LPs. When he came home with this thing, my mom was furious.”

But the family fell in love with the music, and her father played the records — Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky — day after day, eventually declaring that the entire family would have to learn to ‘make that beautiful noise’ themselves. At the age of nine, Wu Han began attending a music program run by Belgian nuns and missionaries. Her amazing proficiency was quickly recognized, and within a few years she had captured all of Taiwan’s major prizes.

“I was just in the right place at the right time,” she says.

At age 22, Wu Han moved to the U.S. to continue with her studies and career, and she eventually met her husband and longtime collaborator, cellist David Finckel, then a member of the prestigious Emerson Quartet. The pair have become best-known for playing chamber music together — in 2012 they were named “Musicians of the Year” by the publication “MusicalAmerica” — but their performances as a duo are just one aspect of busy, multi-faceted careers. They are both soloists who appear at many of the world’s most renowned concert halls; they are co-artistic directors of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, founding artistic directors of the Music@Menlo festival in Silicon Valley, and co-founders of the world’s first Internet-based, musician-centered classical music recording company, ArtistLed, in addition to being dedicated teachers.

“You really have to love travel to be a successful classical musician,” she says of their busy schedules. They often dash around the globe non-stop, sometimes together, often solo. Wu Han says that their daughter, 19, a talented pianist, has no interest in becoming a professional musician after seeing the time, energy and dedication it takes from her parents.

Although this will be the first time Wu Han performs with the Atlanta Symphony, she and ASO Music Director Robert Spano have worked together often. The two met more than 20 years ago as up-and-coming musicians at the Aspen Music Festival, where they’ve continued to collaborate over the years.

“He really is one of my favorite conductors,” Wu Han says. “He’s methodic. He’s very respectful of musicians. He’s incredibly efficient. Those are all the great qualities a conductor needs. His approach to music is very organized, but at the same time never sacrificing the artistic or musical instinct. He’s not just a great technician, he’s a great musician. That makes a huge difference.”

And with such a challenging, unfamiliar piece as Britten’s Piano Concerto on the program, it will be good to have an old friend at the podium.

“We did it in Aspen last July and people just went crazy” she says. “Because it’s not familiar, you really want to make sure it’s done well so people can be in love with it. In the world of classical music, we tend to program the same pieces, audience favorites, over and over. But once in a while you program a piece that’s unexpected and unknown, but so effective the audience ends up saying, ‘I didn’t know there were such spectacular modern concertos around.’ This concerto is one of those.”