CANBERRA-bound violinist Rusanda Panfili may be a fun-loving girl in one of the world’s most exciting cities, but she is a serious artist who leads a disciplined private life.

“It’s very difficult, I must combine my friendships with my job, but fortunately my dear friends are musicians,” says the 25-year-old Vienna-based performer, where she’s completing a masters at the University of Music and Performing Arts.

A first-prize winner at the Fidelio Music Competition in Vienna, she’s also been branching out into Viennese waltz and tango – and she dances, too.

Panfili will be in Canberra at the end of the month to perform in “Gypsy Fire”, the latest of Canberra musical entrepreneur Carl Rafferty’s famous Albert Hall dinner-concert extravaganzas.

It will be what Rafferty calls “scintillating showmanship”, a combination of virtuoso violin and coloratura soprano, featuring famous gypsy violin tunes such as “Dark Eyes”, Brahms’ Hungarian Dance no. 5, and somehow, even tunes by Tchaikovsky, Strauss and Puccini.

Panfili couldn’t be more excited.

“I’m really looking forward to visiting Australia, it’s very exotic for me,” she tells “CityNews” by phone from Vienna.

The title of the concert goes back to Panfili’s origins in Romania where, although born in Moldova, she was raised.

“Many of the pieces we are performing were written by Romanian composers so they’re very much folk-inspired,” she explains. “In Romania lots of the folk musicians are gypsies.”

But hers is strictly a classical music education, so where does she fit?

Panfili says she started violin practice very early, moving to Vienna at age 11 to study at the conservatory.

“I’m still a classical performer, but one doesn’t have to be a folk musician to play gypsy violin,” she says.

“A violinist should have that in their repertoire… my performances are still classical, but with a lot of fun.”

In recent years she has performed different styles, not to survive but because “each musicians have many different styles, just as many composers are inspired by gypsy or Latin American music.”

A recent video clip shows Panfili and Rafferty’s soprano daughter Kate floating around the gardens and historical monuments of the Austrian capital while playing, singing, dancing and generally having a good time.

Panfili tells me she and Kate have been trying “Gypsy Fire” out on European audiences after meeting through a pianist and “doing little concerts here and there”.

“The musical community is quite small here in Vienna,” she reports, so she and Kate have quickly become good friends, so much so that, as father Carl reports, they’ve been “punishing my plastic buying sensational dresses to bring to Australia for ‘Gypsy Fire’.”

“Gypsy Fire”, Albert Hall, champagne supper concert, 8pm, Friday October 31; dinner show, 7pm, Saturday, November 1; twilight concert followed by supper, 6pm, Sunday, November 2. Bookings to carlrafferty@bigpond.com or 0417 429899.