When the heavy door shut on her finger, causing it to bleed, the first thought on Ching-Yun Hu’s mind was not pain. It was about the various appearances the award-winning pianist was scheduled to make.

“‘Oh my god, the concerts!’” she said to herself.

In spite of her best efforts, including trying to relearn whole songs, the injury did derail plans for many shows.

“I tried to rearrange the fingerings. That was impossible,” says Hu from her home in Philadelphia.

It meant canceling several performances - some on short notice - including one scheduled to take place with the Symphony of Northwest Arkansas in January of last year.

For that show, her mentor and friend, Sergei Babayan, stepped in to play when Hu could not.

But Hu’s schedule, which every year includes performances with international orchestras and the curation of a festival in her home country of Taiwan, was already cleared. As a spectator, and not the featured guest, she watched SoNA’s performance with Babayan.

She was pleased - and maybe a little surprised - when SoNA maestro Paul Haas invited her back this year. She readily accepted.

“I’m very excited to come back,” Hu says. “I think the program is very exciting.”

The symphony will offer two pieces Saturday evening: Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto in B-Flat Minor Op. 23 and Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 in B-Flat Major.

Hu will be featured during the Tchaikovsky piece, which alternates between dreary and jubilant. Hu says the piece is near the top of the canon fororchestral pianists.

“The melody is beautiful … It’s very exciting for the audience,” she says.

Hu intends to build upon the success she achieved in 2012 in the new year. That’s a tall order, especially considering her last recording, “Ching-Yun Hu Plays Chopin,” garnered the Golden Melody award in Taiwan as the best classical album. That honor comes in addition to dozens of other awards she’s earned in the past, among them multiple competition victories.

She’s already cemented her reputation as one of the world’s most sought after and talented young pianists, having trained at the Juilliard School and taken home the top prize at the 2008 Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Israel.

She’s currently at work on several contemporary commissioned pieces and will travel internationally, including a string of dates in Germany and Brazil in the coming months.

She’s also organizing a new music festival in her native country. She equates her efforts as festival coordinator to putting together a puzzle. It’s a 16-month process to successfully organize one festival.

“I’m the kind of person who cannot stop with my ideas,” she says.

And now that she’s back at full strength, she need not.

Whats Up, Pages 14 on 01/25/2013