Honolulu's classical music season is starting several weeks early this year, with a one-time-only, independent event sponsored by the University of Hawai'i-Manoa's Outreach College and endorsed by Honolulu's Japanese Consulate.

On Sunday, cellist Mineo Hayashi presents an afternoon of solo works accompanied by Honolulu pianist Jennifer Perry.

Hayashi crosses the Pacific regularly, traveling from his home in Switzerland to annual concert tours in Japan, but has paused to perform in Honolulu only once before, in 2004.

He travels with an international resume: He earned a premier prix (first prize) upon graduating from the Geneva Conservatory of Music in 1972 and first prize at the Belgrade International Cello Competition in 1975. He has performed with the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, the Swiss Romande Orchestra and the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra, among others. He formed the Tokyo String Trio in 1992 and is a professor in the International Academy of Suzuki Method. He also presents solo concerts throughout Europe, the U.S., and Japan.

In Japan, his tours have garnered enthusiastic attention from the news media for their expressive settings, which have included the Oya Underground Cave in Utsumiya City and famous temples in Tokyo and Kyoto.

Sunday's concert will be in a somewhat more prosaic setting, Orvis Auditorium, but will still feature monuments — musical ones of the cello repertoire.

The program includes one of the three Beethoven cello sonatas, and Schumann's "Adagio and Allegro."

Three lesser-known works will also be performed, including a sonata by Italian Giuseppe Valenti (1681-1753).

Valenti's sonata appeared in one of several collections of instrumental works designed to make a name for the young composer and to attract an offer of a permanent position. Part of the fun of these works is listening for what was new for the time, for the surprising oddities dreamt up by Valenti, who came to be known as Straccioncino ("Little Ragamuffin").

Today, the music sounds little more fantastic or surprising than his contemporaries' — but Valenti took pains to emphasize how new and original his work was.

He used titles such as "Chamber Whimsies" and "Musical Fantasies" and explained in one of his prefaces, "If you think this work in some places diverges from the correct rules, remember that I have written it to give more pleasure to those listeners who do not like to be confined within narrow limits."

Hayashi has also planned works by cellists David Popper of Austria (1843-1913) and Gaspar Cassado of Spain (1897-1966). Their music is marked by virtuosic yet idiomatic writing for the cello.

Popper was a renowned virtuoso, an influential teacher, and author of one of the great cello pedagogies.

Cassado, too, was one of the finest cellists of his generation and began his career by studying with Pablo Casals, probably the greatest cellist of the early 20th century.

Hayashi, having studied with Casals' first Japanese student, Yoshio Sato, continues the Casals tradition. Casals described his tradition succinctly: "The purpose of technique is to transmit the inner meaning, the message of the music. The most perfect technique is that which is not noticed at all."

Hayashi's accompanist, Jennifer Perry, was raised in Hawai'i and graduated from Punahou School. She earned her master of music degree in piano performance, chamber music, and accompanying from the University of Colorado.