"It saved me," he jokes, before his Dunedin debut with the Southern Sinfonia this weekend.
"I tried the french horn first, but it was a disaster. You can ring my sister and ask her . . . it was an absolute disaster," he laughs.
Manghi grew up surrounded by music in Parma; a northern Italian city with a population of about 180,000 people.
"My grandfather played in street bands in small villages in Italy," he says.
"I was involved in music from when I was very young.
"I tried other instruments, but I was always fascinated by the flute."
Manghi quickly claimed several international solo flute competitions, before joining the Philharmonic Orchestra of Parma when he was 18.
"The interesting thing about the flute is playing in the colours. The warmth and different shades of colours. It can be very sparkling and very colourful. The tone and sound of the instrument," he says.
"I always try to put the music in front of the flute. The sound of the flute alone is a very clean sound. It's about ancient history. It's one of the oldest instruments in music history. A piece of wood or bone can be a flute," he says.
"You can still recreate that. You can still feel that."
Manghi (35) will play Mozart's Flute Concerto No.2 in the Glenroy Auditorium concert on Sunday.
"It's a beautiful piece and it's a very important piece in the flute repertoire. It's the same as his concerto for the oboe, only instead of C Major it was D Major," he says.
"It's funny, but Mozart didn't really like the flute. He used to say: 'What's worse than a flute? Seven flutes together.'
"He got a commission to write three flute concertos. The first one was a major and then he just transposed the second one from the oboe in C Major. He never wrote the third one."
Manghi has been based in Auckland for the past three years, where he freelances between the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Auckland Philharmonic and Christchurch Symphony Orchestra.
"I love being here. It's a very beautiful country here, in New Zealand, but you have to maintain your music contacts. So I try to get back to Europe every year."
The final Southern Sinfonia matinee series concert for 2008 features Symphony No.4, House of the Devil (Boccherini), Flute Concerto No.2 (Mozart), Out of the Blue (Nigel Westlake), and Symphony No.104, London (Hadyn).
Leading Australian conductor Brett Kelly will also make his Dunedin debut at the concert.
The Academy of Melbourne chief conductor and resident conductor of premier contemporary opera company ChamberMade Opera is looking forward to the performance of La Casa Diavolo (The House of the Devil) as a highlight of the concert.
"The orchestra will have fun with Boccherini's symphony . . . revelling in devilish, fiery and unusual effects," he said.
• Luca Manghi plays Mozart at 3pm on Sunday in the Glenroy Auditorium.
