Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4 - Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 2 & Ballade No. 4 (Live) Eric Lu

• Frédéric Chopin (1810 - 1849): Ballade No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 52:
• 1Chopin: Ballade No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 52 (Live)11:47
• Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 35:
• 2Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 35: I. Grave - Doppio movimento (Live)08:09
• 3Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 35: II. Scherzo (Live)07:18
• 4Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 35: III. Marche funèbre (Lento) [Live]10:05
• 5Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 35: IV. Finale (Presto) [Live]02:08
• Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827): Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58:
• 6Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58: I. Allegro moderato (Live)19:09
• 7Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58: II. Andante con moto (Live)05:09
• 8Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58: III. Rondo (Vivace) [Live]10:17
• Total Runtime01:14:02

Info for Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4 - Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 2 & Ballade No. 4 (Live)

Warner Classics and Askonas Holt are proud to announce the signing of 20-year old American pianist, Eric Lu, winner and Dame Fanny Waterman Gold Medallist at the prestigious Leeds International Piano Competition 2018. As part of this year’s coveted prize the winner receives worldwide management with Askonas Holt – one of the world's leading arts management agencies, and an international album release on Warner Classics – one of the foremost global classical music recording companies. This is the first time a record label and a management agency partner with ‘The Leeds’ to create a ground-breaking portfolio prize designed with long-term career development in mind.

The recording deal is a corner-stone of its new prize package, designed to redefine what a music competition can offer young performers.

Both, Warner Classics and Askonas Holt, aim to ensure that the winner has the opportunities, support and advice to develop a significant long-term international career.

Eric Lu, piano
Hallé Orchestra
Edward Gardner, conductor

Eric Lu
Nineteen years old at the time of this recording, Eric Lu chose to follow up his debut album of Chopin works with some of the deepest and most personal music written by Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. A young pianist with enormous promise, Eric Lu first gained international acclaim by winning Fourth Prize at the 2015 International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, becoming one of the youngest laureates in the history of the prestigious competition. That same year he won First Prize at the 9th National Chopin Competition in Miami. He subsequently won the 2017 International German Piano Award in Frankfurt and was also awarded the Audience Prize by a nearly unanimous vote. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung praised the “phenonmenal technical mastery” of his playing, emphasizing that though “he may seem shy, he is able to captivate his audience.” The Verlagsgruppe Rhein-Main commended his performance as “sensitive, alternating between melancholy and rebellion, he brings out the expressive threads of the work and sculpts melodic lines from the virtuoso and richly textured piano part with fascinating lucidity.” Following these successes, over the past two years Eric Lu has received invitations to perform in many important venues around the world, including Carnegie Hall in New York, the Auditorio Nacional in Madrid, the Alte Oper Frankfurt, twice returning to the “Chopin and his Europe” Music Festival in Warsaw’s National Philharmonic, the Jordan Hall in Boston, the Taipei National Concert Hall, the Beijing Concert Hall, the Strathmore Music Center in Washington, D.C., the International Chopin Festival Duszniki in Poland, the NOSPR Concert Hall in Katowice, the Krakow Philharmonic Concert Hall and the Nohant Chopin Festival in France. After the Chopin Competition, Eric Lu went on tour in Japan and Korea with the Warsaw Philharmonic, including performances at the Tokyo Metropolitan Hall, the Seoul Arts Center, the Osaka Symphony Hall and the Sapporo Arts Center. Eric Lu has collaborated with many orchestras, including the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Halle, the National Philharmonic Strathmore, the Arthur Rubinstein Philharmonic, the Orchestra of the 18th century, the Orquestra Clásica Santa Cecilia, the New Jersey Symphony, the Sinfonietta Cracovia, the Poznań and Kielce philharmonic orchestras and the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra. Eric Lu is currently studying at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia with Robert McDonald and Jonathan Biss. He is also a student of the pianist Dang Thai Son. Eric Lu started piano lessons at age five with Dorothy Shi. He was described by the New York Classical Review as a musician of “exceptional musical sensitivity” and Michael Moran of the Duszniki Chopin Festival proclaimed, “The tone Eric Lu produced was luminous, the articulation spellbinding and exciting, the legato and bel canto desperately moving.”

Booklet for Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4 - Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 2 & Ballade No. 4 (Live)