THERE'S no rationalising it. Prodigies - I've given up trying to understand how the mind of one works. Is a prodigious ability specific to a certain activity, ie chess or piano, or is it something that will push down roots in any intellectual enterprise on which the child focuses centrally? It's a chicken or egg situation; in the case of a prodigious young violinist, is the talent specific to the violin or did the violin become, by default, the vehicle for the talent?

I'll tell you who definitely won't give you the answer to that conundrum. Sarah Chang. She's one of "them". By the sounds of it, she didn't waste a lot of time thinking about why, how or from where she came by the talent with which she first wowed the great conductor, Zubin Mehta in a private audition at eight years of age, which prompted Mehta to invite her to make her debut with him and his orchestra, the New York Phil, the very next day. Water off a duck's back.

I spoke to her in a Tel Aviv hotel room a few weeks ago, at the beginning of the international tour that brings her to Ireland this week (18 April) as part of the Irish Times Celebrity Concert Series at the National Concert Hall. I shouldn't have even referred to the "prodigy question", principally because Chang obviously doesn't see her childhood as the bizarre experience that I take it for, but I couldn't help myself. Her autopilot answer ("I started violin when I was three and went to Julliard?.") skirted the issue like the Fermoy bypass. She was not going to get away with that easily though.

"But surely, as a child, you occasionally pined for a normal life?" "No, never. I always felt so grateful for my ability. When you're that young, you don't realise the magnitude of what it is you are doing. I did realise that I wasn't having a normal childhood. I was going to a normal school but I'd be plucked out of class every few weeks to go on tour. When I hit my teens, my peers started to go out on dates and to parties. Maybe for two seconds, I might have said, 'Oh I wish I could go to that party' but that was quickly superseded by, 'Well, I am playing with the Berlin Philharmonic next week' or something as astronomical as that so there was never any question of anything else really."

With her first recording under her belt at the age of nine, she had it all at her feet before she knew what was happening, but nonetheless had to deal with professional situations and standards. "I can't believe I did everything back then so fearlessly.

For instance, when Mehta asked me to play for that New York Phil debut, he told me that orchestral rehearsals were finished. I did that concert without any rehearsal with the orchestra. I would never have the audacity to do that now; I would probably turn the offer down. I was fearless and slightly stupid at the time but, come on? I was eight!"

Though Chang is just 26 years of age, she has been a household name for 15 years. She has done everything. She ran with the Olympic torch in New York in 2004, she's the youngest ever recipient of the Hollywood Bowl's Hall of Fame award (no surprises there), Yale University even named a chair in Sprague Hall in her honour in 2005.

Funnily enough though, this Wednesday's performance at the NCH is a first for her. She's played in Ireland as concerto soloist before but this is her first solo recital here. It's the little things, isn't it, Sarah?