MUSIC : Pianist Noriko Ogawa Wears ‘Emperor’s’ Crown

Beethoven’s “Emperor” Piano Concerto opens with dazzling, sweeping arpeggios played by the soloist. It’s exactly the kind of challenge that pianist Noriko Ogawa likes.

“It’s very cruel to start a piece like that,” she says. “But it’s very impressive and powerful. I like that beginning.”

She will be playing the work for the first time when she appears as soloist with the Pacific Symphony, led by Enrique Diemecke, on Saturday at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre. The Beethoven program also includes the Overture to “Fidelio” and the Symphony No. 2.

Ogawa has been living in Britain since 1987 when she came from her native Tokyo to enter the Harveys Leeds International Pianoforte Competition, where she won the third prize.

“I didn’t intend to live here or to settle here,” the 30-year old pianist said over the phone from London recently. “Then I got the prize. I liked it here. I spend six months of the year in London, then go back home to Tokyo.”

Born to a musical family, Ogawa began to play the piano when she was 4. “I think I was quite aware of becoming a professional ever since I was quite small,” she said. “But when I was a teen-ager, I started doubting myself. . . . I was wondering what I was going to be in the future. But I never stopped playing the piano.”

When she began winning competitions in Japan, however, “that sort of convinced me that, well, maybe I was going to be a professional,” she said.

After studies at the high school associated with the Tokyo College of Music, she went to the Juilliard School in New York.

Although competitions can be grueling, she found the Leeds Competition “very friendly. There is this English tradition of having lots of volunteers to help us all the time, giving us rides, pianos to practice on and helping us in other ways,” she said. “That helped.”

A year after the Leeds Competition, she also was awarded the Muramatsu Prize for her “outstanding contribution to the musical life of Japan.”

Ogawa practices about four or five hours a day, usually by taking “some difficult bits of the piece which I’m working on. I always break up the piece into pieces and work on each part,” she said. “Slowly I build up the piece.”

Ogawa feels “a lot of responsibility” in playing the Beethoven “Emperor” Concerto. “It is a very important work in the repertory and a huge piece,” she said. “I tend to have a very healthy, big sound, so I should take advantage of that.”

The concerto, she said, is “much more technical” than the four other Beethoven piano concertos. “The piano doesn’t have many tunes. The orchestra tends to have them. The piano does a lot of finger work.”

Ogawa said her career “has not been like a rocket, shooting up and reaching the sky in one second. It’s been much slower than that. Building a career is hard for everyone, but I don’t find it impossible. But since this competition, it’s always going ahead.

“I do a lot of concertos with British and Japanese orchestras, mostly. But I do play a lot of solo recitals and also am active in chamber music. All my work is divided more or less equally. I’m quite happy this way.”

Of course, building a career means a life on the road, but Ogawa has no problems with that. “I’m very flexible and can adjust to traveling very well, apart from jet lag,” she said. “I don’t mind traveling on my own.

“Actually, I’m looking forward to watching TV in California,” she added. “British TV tends to be rather serious going. And because it’s summertime now, all they show is cricket matches.

“I don’t understand anything about cricket. I’ve been here five years and people are still trying to explain it to me.”

Who: Pianist Noriko Ogawa with the Pacific Symphony in a Beethoven program led by Enrique Diemecke.

When: Saturday, July 25, at 8 p.m. (Grounds open at 6 p.m.)

Where: Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, 8800 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine.

Whereabouts: San Diego (405) Freeway to Irvine Center Drive exit. Turn left at the end of the ramp if you’re coming from the south, right if you’re coming from the north.

Wherewithal: $12 to $44. ($10 for seating on the lawn.)

Where to Call: (714) 474-4233.