Still ‘Falling In Love’ With Mozart : Music: Pianist Andre-Michel Schub to take over on the Pacific Symphony programs in O.C. that were to have featured Andrea Lucchesini.

As recently as last month, the Pacific Symphony was eagerly announcing the debut on Wednesday of pianist Andrea Lucchesini with the organization, a potentially prestigious event teaming the young Italian with British conductor Christopher Seaman. Two weeks ago, however, Lucchesini, citing illness, canceled his American tour.

Enter Andre-Michel Schub, a 38-year-old virtuoso who will fill in for the ailing Lucchesini. Not only is Schub taking over at the last minute, he also will perform the same Mozart concerto--No. 27, K. 595--that Lucchesini had been scheduled to play.

“I’ve played a good dozen” of the Mozart concertos in concert, Schub said by telephone from his home in New York, “but every time I play this one, it’s like falling in love all over again.

“Mozart’s 27th and final concerto is a very special piece to me, especially the last movement where an angelic nature permeates every note. It’s not a concerto that deals necessarily with death--which at this time in Mozart’s life must have been on his mind--but it deals with the peace and spiritual tranquility of passing into another world.”

Also on the program will be Vaughan Williams’ “A London Symphony” and Weber’s “Oberon” Overture. Seaman will still be on the podium for the programs Wednesday and Thursday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Schub has maintained an impressive career from early on. He began winning prizes as a youth, and his student days were spent at Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he studied with Rudolf Serkin. He has toured internationally over the past several years, performing with many of the world’s major orchestras.

“I guess my strongest repertory is the Viennese classical composers like Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms, not to mention Mozart,” Schub says. “That repertory is the complete challenge for any musician from all points of view--intellectually, structurally and formally, emotionally and spiritually. The act of balancing all these aspects is something that takes even the most gifted musician a lifetime to achieve.

“I don’t do a lot of Bach because I’m enough of a purist to prefer it on a harpsichord (over) piano, and I haven’t worked a lot on harpsichord. I also don’t do a lot of contemporary music, but that’s my fault and certainly nothing to brag about.”

Schub, already busy with his touring schedule, figures to get busier soon: His wife is expecting their first child in July. Although he describes himself as a New Yorker at heart, he has at least one stereotypically Californian characteristic--he is a fitness nut.

“One of the things that I make sure I do every day is run 12 miles,” he said. “It takes me about an hour and a half.”

Among Schub’s more notable competition winnings are the Naumberg International Piano Competition in 1974 and the Grand Prize award at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 1981. Schub’s first such success was the WQXR Piano Competition in New York when he was just 15.

Still, Schub is something of a cynic about competitions and their relationship to young artists’ careers.

“I’ve been very fortunate in competitions, but a pianist should treat a competition like a steppingstone. It’s not like a tennis player who wins at Wimbledon.

“It’s unfortunate that competitions are practically the only way young musicians can get exposure these days. You really have to be sort of crazy to become a concert pianist in today’s world.”

* C hristopher Seaman will conduct the Pacific Symphony in Weber’s “Oberon” Overture, Vaughan Williams’ “A London Symphony” and Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27, K. 595 (with pianist Andre-Michel Schub) on Wednesday and Thursday at 8 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tickets: $10 to $33. Information: (714) 556-2787.