Mike Cheng-Yu Lee will play in Friends of the School of Music recital

Originally Mike Cheng-Yu Lee's next recital at the ANU School of Music was going to contain some Brahms. But then, Lee says, "I had time to spend with the piano."

He discovered the instrument - a Paul McNulty 2004 reproduction of an 1819 Conrad Graf fortepiano from the ANU's historic instrument collection - was more suited to the classical-era music of Beethoven than the later romantic period of Brahms when the fortepiano had evolved into the pianoforte (though both use hammers striking strings to create sound). So he substituted another work by the earlier composer. He will be performing Beethoven's Bagatelles Op. 26 and Piano Sonata No 31 in A flat major Op. 110 as well as Schumann's Papillons Op.2.

The concert is a fundraiser in the Friends of the School of Music Historical Keyboard Recital Series. All the funds raised will go to grants and prizes for current ANU School of Music students.

Since July, Lee has been Lecturer of Piano/Keyboard Performance at the Australian National University School of Music and Director of the ANU Keyboard Institute.

"It's a research centre with historical keyboards set up by [former head of keyboard] Geoffrey Lancaster," he says.

The copies of historical pianos are used in teaching and performance and the originals are used more sparingly to help students understand how earlier keyboards worked, felt and sounded. Lee says the ANU is one of the most innovative music institutions in its approach, with historical and modern instruments used side by side in teaching rather than being sectioned off into separate departments.

"Here, because it's a small school, pianists play all kinds of pianos," he says.

Comparing the pianos of the Romantic era of the mid-19th century to the pianos of Mozart's era in the latter part of the 18th-century, "The difference is huge", Lee says. With the collection of 30 or so instruments - both copies and originals - in the School of Music's collection, he says students get to understand how the music developed and how the instruments feel and the differences in texture, technique, sound and feeling from one to another. The older instruments have shallower keys and levers pushed with the knee rather than pedals. .

"In terms of sound - sound decays more quickly [in older instruments] than modern ones and there's much greater contrast between registers and greater transparency of textures."

That doesn't include the collection's clavichords and harpsichords, which are also keyboard instruments but operate in different ways: the former by having blades strike brass or iron rings, the latter by having quills pluck strings.

Lee says his own repertoire ranges widely: "I play everything from Bach to early 20th-century music like Debussy - Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Mozart."

Born in Taiwan, he spent six years in New Zealand but has lived most of his life in the US. He studied at Cornell and Yale Universities and was also lecturer of music theory at the latter. Before coming to Australia he was visiting assistant professor at the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University-Bloomington.

He says he's enjoyed his time at the ANU and in Canberra so far.

"The air is very nice, there are nice people here, very good food, it's very pleasant ... It will provide a lot of opportunities."

He is planning a trip to Europe to visit instrument maker Paul McNulty in the summer.

"I want to learn a few things."

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