Keys to Success : For 10 years, pianist Raul Di Blasio has mixed Latin rhythms, pop and classical; at last, he thinks his time has come.

He doesn’t sing, he doesn’t dance--and at 44, he’s no spring chicken.

But sit Raul Di Blasio in front of his grand piano and watch this most unlikely of rising stars blow away audiences around the world with melt-your-heart tunes that don’t need translation. Add heaps of artless charm and it starts to make sense that in an arena dominated by salsa, mariachi and banda, this odd man out is one of Latin pop’s surest crossover bids.

Though his Los Angeles debut Saturday at the Universal Amphitheatre seems tardy, considering his recording career spans five albums and more than a decade, Di Blasio is confident that after years of rejections and put-downs, his time has come.

“My authenticity became commercial,” says the Argentine pianist. Record company executives, he says, “would always say, ‘Sorry, Di Blasio. You don’t sell, piano music doesn’t sell.’ But I’m a Latin pianist born in Latin America, that’s what I am, I’m not going to invent something else. I am what looms behind a tango, and that’s what I have to give to the world and I assure you, that’s what I’ll do sooner or later.”

As far as his record company is concerned, Di Blasio is doing just fine. His newest album, “El Piano de America 2” (BMG Latin), has sold close to 1 million copies worldwide and his music--a blend of Latin rhythms, pop and classical--is firmly entrenched in much of Latin America and the world.

“Being instrumental, his music translates well,” says Ralph Stewart, programming director for KTWV-FM (94.7). “It has a Latin feel, but it has great melodies, and that’s what makes it on the air here.”

At the other end of the dial, at Latin pop and ballad station KLVE-FM (107.5), Di Blasio alternates with such favorites as Luis Miguel and Julio Iglesias.

“We play him a lot,” says programming director Maria Navas. “We’re not an instrumental station, but we play him because the listeners request him. We did the same with Richard Clayderman.”

Di Blasio is frequently compared with Clayderman, the French pianist who made it big in Latin America in the ‘70s and ‘80s with his piano and small orchestra renditions of popular classics. Though for many Clayderman epitomizes mediocre pianism and cheesy elevator music, Di Blasio doesn’t mind the comparison.

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“If someone sells many records in this business, there’s something to the music,” Di Blasio says of Clayderman. “Regardless of whether I like him or not, people like him. And if comparing me with him furthers my career, then I welcome the comparison. Musically speaking, I’ll make sure people know the difference.”

When comparisons turn to Liberace, however, Di Blasio beams. “I love to be compared with him, because that man made so many people happy. And he did so much for popular piano. He paved the way for many artists.”

On stage, though nowhere near as dramatic as the flamboyant Liberace (who would drive to the piano in a Rolls Royce), Di Blasio exudes a showmanship and warmth that immediately endears him to his audience.

During a recent lunch at a trendy Hollywood eatery, cooks, parking attendants and patrons stopped by the table to say hi to the long-haired, mustachioed Di Blasio, who is happy to interrupt his meal to return greetings and sign autographs.

“It’s not only the people in suits who like my music,” he says, pleased. “It’s the waiters, the people. They call me ‘Raulito,’ not maestro.”

Di Blasio’s eagerness to please harks back to his days as a hotel lounge pianist, when he could make everybody “shut up and listen” if he felt like it.

Trained as a classical pianist in his native Argentina, Di Blasio for years alternated “serious” music with rock gigs.

He finally went on tour to neighboring Chile, found a job in a swank hotel at the resort town of Vina del Mar and settled down--for a while.

“I played in a hotel, like many pianists, and I started to stay. I formed a band, and the years went by, love went by and it was a wonderful time . . . I’ve never had more girlfriends in my life,” he adds, laughing.

He recorded his first album, for EMI Latin in 1982, almost on a whim. But things didn’t take off until eight years, three albums and two record companies later, when he signed with BMG and, backed by his band, started selling albums by the millions.

Even then, Di Blasio was never quite in the limelight.

Until now.

“1994 was the year where everything jelled and my career took off,” he says. “There was a balance between BMG’s backing and my work. I was no longer an orphan.”

The fact is obvious in the care that has gone into Di Blasio’s “Piano de America 2,” recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra and featuring guest appearances by Latin crooners Iglesias and Juan Gabriel and American singer Wendy Pedersen.

More important, BMG is, for the first time, seriously pushing one of its Latino artists as a crossover product.

“That is our ultimate goal,” says Luis G. Pisterman, Western region manager. “We want everyone to know who Di Blasio is.”

Which is just fine with Di Blasio, who is already well-known in places as far-flung as the Middle East and wants his piano to be heard “everywhere.”

That he had to wait until his 40s for his career to take off doesn’t daunt him in the least.

“If I were a singer, maybe. But as an instrumentalist . . . my music crosses frontiers with imagination and fantasy,” he says. “After all, Beethoven is about 400 years old, and people still discover him every day.”

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WHERE AND WHEN:

Who: Pianist Raul Di Blasio with his eight-piece band.

Location: Universal Amphitheatre, 100 Universal City Plaza.

Hours: 8:15 p.m. Saturday.

Price: $27.50 to $37.50.

Call: (213) 480-3232.