To her audiences, the intense young pianist with the blazing fingers and crown of blonde hair might be a virtuoso, but on the phone from Manhattan, Natasha Paremski sounds like any other 19-year-old: ebullient, breathless and just a little tongue-tied.

That is, until you ask her about music.

That's when the former Fremont resident -- who plays San Francisco's Florence Gould Theater at the Legion of Honor today as part of San Francisco Performances' Young Masters Series -- opens up.

"Dreamy," "beautiful," "wistful" and "eerie": Paremski's earnest descriptions of the music she plays can be applied to the Moscow native's evocative interpretations of masterworks by Bach, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich, as well as pieces by contemporary composers such as Fred Hersch and John Corigliano.

Paremski's emotive readings coupled with her technical brilliance have caught the ear of the classical music world. But Paremski isn't fazed. She's too busy making sure audiences connect with the composers of the past and present.

Q   What are your earliest memories of music?

A   My earliest memories are in Russia. It's funny -- this might sound a little cheesy -- but my first memory was coming up to the piano and playing it in our little apartment in Moscow.

Q   How old were you at the time?

A   I think I was probably 2.

Q   How did the classical music community you found in the United States differ from that in Russia?

A   It was completely different. There's this certain school of technique in Moscow that actually differs from other parts of the country in Russia. Here I studied with a teacher who's from a different city and she had a different idea about technique. I already had established a technique.

I went through many teachers and they were all different. The beautiful thing is that I learned something completely new and different from each one of them. I started studying with a teacher who lives in Columbus, Ohio -- Earl Wild. With Earl, I learned so many things about sound and how to find interesting things in the score.

Q   Can you tell us about your thought process behind choosing today's San Francisco Performances program?

A   It's kind of one of those things where I woke up one morning and I thought, "If I don't play the Brahms Handel variations, I'm going to die. If I don't play the Chopin Polonaise-Fantasy, I'm also going to die!"

Q   It sounds like you're extremely driven. What fuels your passion for the piano?

A   I wish I was that aware. I'm working on it. I think music is an almost obscure art because it's something that's in another dimension, and therefore it expresses a part of our lives that we cannot readily explain in art or words or movies or dance. It's very subconscious. I think that it's a wonderful place for me to go every day for six hours! I'm very lucky that I can do that. I feel very blessed.

Q   What are your goals as an artist?

A   My goals are things that can't really readily be explained. To put it simply, I want to play better and better every time I sit in front of the piano ... but how I'm not sure.

Q   What's in your stereo at the moment?

A   Hmmm ... I have this beautiful recording of the opera "Eugene Onegin" by Tchaikovsky with (Galina) Vishnevska and all these great Russian singers. That's what I was listening to.

Q   Where do you see yourself in a decade?

A   I don't know! I hope I can still perform and play beautiful music in front of audiences -- maybe help inspire them and help them feel the music and connect with it, because that's what I do. That's what any performer or interpreter essentially does.

The whole point of our work is to connect the audience with the piece that this composer created, I think. That's what I love about my job.

Reach Jennifer Modenessi at 925-977-8483 or jmodenessi@cctimes.com