Though many quarters of the classical music industry are pulling for her, the 25-year-old Curtis Institute and Juilliard School graduate hasn't followed her talented, ambitious countrymen - Lang Lang, Yuja Wang - into an overnight global concert career and high-visibility recording contract.

Many would say she's better off for that. Too much, too soon can destroy young talent. Hers is the sort that gives the heroic romantic composers a confiding intimacy - "as if it's coming from inside of her," says Gary Graffman, her Curtis teacher who still gives her occasional lessons. "It's exciting playing, not for the sake of being exciting."

Yet keeping Rachmaninoff in her fingers while looking after the business end of her life is exhausting. Now preparing her Philadelphia recital debut tomorrow at the Trinity Center, Wu is triumphing over a five-concert-in-seven-days bottleneck caused by long-scheduled commitments and last-minute invitations she couldn't refuse, such as last week's Philadelphia Orchestra concert and engagements that came out of her excellent showing at this year's Van Cliburn Competition.

Arriving Monday at Geneva, N.Y., after 15 hours of travel from Abilene, Texas, she wasn't sure enthusiasm was possible. But record-high attendance for that venue gave her a healthy case of nerves.

"If I wasn't nervous, it meant that I didn't care," she said in barely accented English. "Sometimes you wonder if the give-and-take [of a career] is equal. I still feel inspired to do more, to perform more. I'm very lucky."

What should be low-pressure concerts in small towns like Geneva can be anything but. Shortly after the Cliburn Competition (she was a finalist, and some journalists thought she should have been the winner), Wu drew more than 2,000 people at Longwood Gardens, not a typical concert venue, on a night when rain was likely.

"I was shocked. I came in thinking, 'It's a garden concert. How crowded could that be?' " she recalls. "But they were desperately adding chairs. I had no idea what happened. I was delighted!"

Just as often, high anxiety has greeted her at career turning points. Though a talented youngster growing up in Xiamen, China, she ambled into concert pianism barely aware of the consequences until it was too late to turn back. Had she abandoned music after a certain point in the rigid Chinese education system, she would have been hopelessly behind in overall requirements.

The honor of studying at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing also came with barely endurable living conditions. She and her mother had a room far smaller than a typical Juilliard rehearsal studio: "We had a piano and a bed and one of those coal- burning places for warmth and cooking. There was no bathroom. That was down the aisle. No light. Spiderwebs everywhere. But there was worse. We had a sink. Other people didn't."

Opportunities became cliffhangers. Though a chance meeting in Beijing with a Manhattan School of Music professor yielded a scholarship, she was repeatedly refused a U.S. visa. On her third try, the officer was on his last day at the job and said yes to nearly everybody.

Life in New York was wiping out her parents' savings, so the expense-free but hard-to-crack Curtis Institute was a singular option. Though her application was days late, she was accepted. Graduating at age 21, she went on to Juilliard, still not feeling ready for a career.

Now she does - whether or not she has management. "I've been booking myself for the past two years," she says. "I shamelessly call people and introduce myself. . . . Somehow, I've gotten success."

Her problem is slowing down. Her association with Astral Artists, the young artists program that presents tomorrow's recital, taught her about maintaining musical standards while multitasking, or, as Wu puts it, "not being so tired from making 30 phone calls a day that I can't think about music."

Graffman tells her to slow down, too. Wu agrees. "When you get onstage, the adrenaline is such that what you think you're hearing and what you should be hearing are two different things," she says. "Then you find yourself playing wrong notes because you're playing so fast. One of my teachers said I'm like a wild horse."

And where, in the wilds of Manhattan, does such a horse go to pasture? The Juilliard mail room - the scene of a student work/study arrangement. Now it's almost family. "It's my therapy," she says. "I enjoy the people there. They know whenever I'm in town."