MUSIC : Buechner Keying In on Success

Pianist David Buechner didn’t have to talk to a high school guidance counselor to figure out what he wanted to do in life.

“By the age of 4, even, I knew that what I wanted to do was play the piano,” says Buechner, who will be soloist with the South Coast Symphony on Saturday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre.

He will play Saint-Saens’ Piano Concerto No. 4 with the orchestra led by Larry Granger.

Buechner, 32 and a native of Baltimore, began his studies early. “I could read music without any instruction when I was 4,” he recalls. “It was quite a mystery. I just had a lot of natural gifts.”

Those gifts won him six scholarships at the Juilliard School of Music in New York, where he began studying when he was 17. He’s lived in New York ever since.

Juilliard, he says, “had its ups and downs, but it wised me up to what the level of real music-making was and what standard I had to achieve to make it.”

He began making it by scoring in prestigious competitions. His prizes include the bronze medal at the 1983 Queen Elizabeth of Belgium International Piano Competition, grand prize at the 1984 Utah Symphony Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition and sixth prize at the 1986 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition, among others. His sixth-place finish at the Tchaikovsky was the highest among Americans there.

“I looked at competitions as opportunities,” he says, “necessary evils, a way to get my name around and my reputation established . . . like getting visa stamps on my passport.”

Since leaving Juilliard, he has played with the orchestras of Philadelphia, Cleveland, San Francisco, St. Louis, Minnesota and other cities, under conductors such as Leonard Slatkin, Edo deWaart, Sergiu Comissiona and David Zinman.

He made his Los Angeles recital debut in 1986 and most recently played in the Southland in a recital at UCLA in 1989.

“Strangely enough, because of the way my career has developed, I’m doing pretty much what I have always wanted to do--play a lot of different pieces,” he says.

“I know about 60 different concertos, which is a high total. At this point, actually, I’m looking to cut down. It’s stressful to be playing something different every time I appear with an orchestra.

“But I always wanted to study a lot of different music when I was a student, and my career has naturally developed because of that. That’s the way that I am, too. I’m very curious about a lot of different things.”

Buechner calls Saint-Saens’ Fourth Concerto “really the best of his five.”

“It has a wonderful opening--a bit mystical and atmospheric. And structurally, it’s a wonderful piece. He really takes the opening motive and works it, sewing it up nice and neat.

“The concerto is hard to play,” he adds, “because it’s fast virtuosic stuff and it’s written a little awkwardly. For me the challenge is to give it enough color and life and verve.

“If I had to define my approach, I’d say it is really an architectural one. I want to take apart the building and look at the blocks within it, and then put it together again.”

Who: Pianist David Buechner with the South Coast Symphony led by Larry Granger.

When: Saturday, April 4, at 8 p.m.

Where: Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine.

Whereabouts: On the UC Irvine campus, on Campus Road near University Drive, across from the Marketplace mall.

Wherewithal: $12 to $25.

Where to Call: (714) 854-4646.