Natasha Paremski was born in Moscow in 1987, shortly after Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the idea of glasnost, or "openness," to the Soviet Union.

From the beginning, Paremski's timing was perfect.

Perhaps growing up in a society that was learning how to relax a bit and embrace freedoms previously denied to Muscovites contributed to Paremski's serene nature.

Indeed, the celebrated 17-year-old pianist seems blessed with an innate immunity to anxiety, which is a good thing when you are expected to perform - masterfully and artfully - the most intricate and emotionally varied compositions ever written. And not just for an engineer in a recording studio, but for several hours in front of hundreds of prominent people who have paid small fortunes to watch you play, often solo, accompanied by the world's most renowned symphonies.

"I am never anxious," says Paremski, who looks more like a WB sitcom star than a concert pianist who gets standing ovations not just from her audience, but from the members of the symphonies who have invited her to play with them. "It's a complete high, definitely."

Paremski is part of a new movement that aims to draw younger fans. When she can, she dresses casually onstage and, though there will always be traditionalists who disapprove of any interaction, she wants to connect with her audience; she wants to convey what it is that she finds so joyful in music that has been around for hundreds of years.

"In Russia, classical music is THE thing. Young people go on dates to hear it, like rock concerts."

Like the true prodigies before her, Paremski began exploring the mechanics of the piano before she could speak. By age 4, she went to her first lesson. "That was the moment it all started," she says about her all-encompassing desire to master the instrument. "I just remember that I really liked the sound."

Soon thereafter, she was reading music and had a rudimentary appreciation for Chopin's melancholy compositions. The little post-glasnost Russian girl was even younger than the age at which the 19th century Polish composer himself began studying piano.

Paremski has won numerous prestigious awards around the world, has made two CDs with the Moscow Philharmonic, and, in February, made her Carnegie Hall debut.

Was she nervous?

"Not at all. [Onstage,] you focus on the piece totally. You think of nothing else, except the orchestra."

Listening to her muscular fingers devour the keyboard - while playing Chopin's sweeping Variations on "La ci darem la mano," from Mozart's "Don Giovanni," for example - even on a CD, it is instantly clear that her range and emotional connection to the music is stunning. Like a musical Meryl Streep, Paremski completely inhabits the piece; there seems no place on the piano that is unfamiliar or uncomfortable to her.

Indeed, she can play a tenth - meaning she can stretch her young hands across 10 ivories.

And these are not little ditties Paremski is playing, but massive, sweeping, finger-throbbing masterpieces. But like an athlete, the high overcomes the fatigue.

"You have so much energy onstage that you don't get exhausted," she says. "Sometimes you even have to pull yourself back, and save your energy for later."