17-Year-Old Will Solo on Both the Violin and Piano : Music: Prodigy Corey Cerovsek will perform two Mozart concertos tonight at St. Andrew’s Church in Newport Beach.

OK. Let’s get the accolades out of the way right at the start. Early bloomer. Whiz kid. Dare we say, prodigy ?

In any case, 17-year-old Corey Cerovsek already has some dazzling achievements to his credit. He has played the violin with the Israel Philharmonic (conducted by Zubin Mehta), the Montreal Symphony (with Charles Dutoit conducting) and the Toronto, Vancouver and Hamilton orchestras, for starters.

But wait! He also plays the piano, and has received awards and top prizes for his artistry on that instrument.

In fact, he will be soloist on both instruments tonight in two Mozart concertos--one for violin, one for piano--with the Mozart Camerata conducted by Ami Porat at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach.

And that’s not all.

He is completing his doctorate in music at Indiana University. Remember, he’s 17. He already has a master of arts degree in music, and the courses out of the way for an MS in mathematics, having already knocked off his bachelor’s degrees in music and mathematics, in 1987.

Mathematics?

“This is one of the perpetual questions in my life: what I think the connection between music and math is,” Cerovsek said in a recent phone interview from his home in Bloomington, Ind.

“A couple of years ago, I very honestly would have gone into how deeply philosophically connected they are. But quite truthfully . . . now I say there is not much of a connection. I like the contrasts. It’s a nice change to go from my music studies to mathematics. I’m lightening up these days.”

Born to Austrian parents in Vancouver, Cerovsek moved with his family to Bloomington when he was 12 so that he could begin studying at the university with famed violinist and teacher Josef Gingold. Cerovsek was the youngest student ever to attend the University.

“That always has a great shock value,” he said, “but it’s a misconception to say that I started university at 12. I would have had to start high school at 6!”

Cerovsek was admitted as a special student because he did not have a high school diploma, and thus began what he called “the silliest episode in my life”--completing high school through correspondence courses with a school back in Canada.

“I took driver’s ed at 13 by mail,” he said, “and if that wasn’t silly, what is?”

New to Bloomington and younger than his peers, Cerovsek followed his own interests.

“Being a young, intelligent nerd type, I gravitated to a calculus book,” he said. “I thought it was the trendiest thing. I didn’t know anybody. There was nothing to do.

“I began taking math and calculus courses. Nobody noticed what you’re doing any more after one semester. I didn’t take any music. I took math courses. Three years later, I showed up at the undergraduate office and said, ‘Oh, by the way, I got most of the requirements for this degree here.’ They were shocked. . . . ‘You’re still a high school student,’ they said.

“So I decided to step on the pedal on the correspondence courses. I did five or six lessons at a snatch instead of one at a time. Then I did the exams before getting the (corrected) stuff back.

“So I got my Canadian diploma three weeks later by Federal Express, right before the semester was over. It was close timing. . . . I just love making trouble with their course numbers. It makes me feel so good to make trouble.”

Although Cerovsek said he is beginning to take more solo stints as a pianist, most of his concerts have been as a violinist.

“I say, without much hesitation, that I’m a violinist. My piano teacher (at Indiana U.), Enrica Cavallo-Gulliand, she’s having woes trying to persuade me that, yes, I am a pianist. But I don’t really practice a whole lot of piano. . . .”

He is aware that many prodigies have burned out after becoming adults. “It doesn’t worry me,” he said. “It sounds contradictory but I’ve really been taking things at a relaxed pace, professionally.

“I came to the States 5 1/2 years ago. There was a little flurry of media stuff. I was on the ‘Tonight’ show twice, there were magazines asking for interviews. It would have been possible, if I and my parents had wanted to, to make the most of this and make one of these very splashy entrances on the music scene. That’s the kind of thing I would worry about.

“(But) the media managed to get bored very quickly and forgot about me. I went back to my studies. I am much more ready for a career at this point. I had a chance to study a large repertory and play a good deal of repertory.

“I find myself actually in a transition at this point. The easy thing to do when you are, I guess, frankly, when you’re naturally musical and such, is to do things very intuitively. That was the way I operated, until recently.

“But nowadays, I find myself more and more, because of the degrees, ‘maturing. . . .’ You notice these things somewhat subconsciously--here is the (musical) exposition, development, you change this theme in this way. It sort of buttresses your opinions. But I don’t spend a lot of time thinking of it aloud.”

Cerovsek still lives at home and limits himself to two or three concerts a month. He admits that his youth gets him into some awkward situations. “People just don’t know how they should talk to me. Often, when I’m introduced to somebody not my age, they have a terrible fear they can’t talk to me, that they have to talk either (music) analysis or relativity.”

Corey Cerovsek will be both violin and piano soloist with the Mozart Camerata directed by Ami Porat tonight at 8:30 at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, 600 St. Andrews Road, Newport Beach. Cerovsek will be soloist in the Piano Concerto No. 9 and the Violin Concerto No. 3. Porat also will conduct Mozart’s Symphony No. 40. Tickets $18 . Information: (714) 581-3066.