Winner of the 19th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition Warsaw 2025 (Live) Eric Lu

• Frédéric Chopin (1810 - 1849): Waltz No. 7 in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 64 No. 2:
• 1 Chopin: Waltz No. 7 in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 64 No. 2 (Live) 04:20
• Nocturne No. 7 in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 27 No. 1:
• 2 Chopin: Nocturne No. 7 in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 27 No. 1 (Live) 06:06
• Mazurka No. 33 in B Major, Op. 56:
• 3 Chopin: Mazurka No. 33 in B Major, Op. 56 No. 1 (Live) 04:35
• 4 Chopin: Mazurka No. 34 in C Major, Op. 56 No. 2 (Live) 01:44
• 5 Chopin: Mazurka No. 35 in C Minor, Op. 56 No. 3 (Live) 06:26
• Barcarolle in F-Sharp Major, Op. 60:
• 6 Chopin: Barcarolle in F-Sharp Major, Op. 60 (Live) 09:22
• Polonaise No. 9 in B-Flat Major, Op. 71 No. 2:
• 7 Chopin: Polonaise No. 9 in B-Flat Major, Op. 71 No. 2 (Live) 06:59
• Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 35:
• 8 Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 35: I. Grave – Doppio movimento (Live) 05:46
• 9 Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 35: II. Scherzo – Più lento (Live) 06:13
• 10 Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 35: III. Marche funèbre. Lento (Live) 09:59
• 11 Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 35: IV. Finale. Presto (Live) 02:02
• Total Runtime 01:03:32

Info for Winner of the 19th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition Warsaw 2025 (Live)

Deutsche Grammophon is releasing an exclusive album featuring highlights from the performances of Eric Lu, winner of the 19th International Chopin Piano Competition. The American pianist was awarded the first prize by the jury after the final round in Warsaw. The recordings of his performances were made live during the traditional music competition (the “Olympics of the piano world” - New York Times) and will be released by Deutsche Grammophon on November 21st.

A record number of over 640 young artists from the farthest corners of the world applied to participate in the 19th International Fryderyk Chopin Competition. After 15 days of auditions and 102 hours of Chopin’s music, the 17-member jury, chaired by Garrick Ohlsson, awarded First Prize to 27-year old, US-born Eric Lu. His interpretations “delighted with their maturity, subtlety, and extraordinary sense of phrasing – this is pianism of the highest order, in a spirit that would have been close to Chopin’s heart.” (Marta Cienkowska, Polish Minister of Culture and National Heritage)

The collaboration between the Fryderyk Chopin Institute and Deutsche Grammophon began in 2015, when the label released an album by the winner immediately after the conclusion of the 17th International Chopin Piano Competition. Seong-Jin Cho's debut recording – a selection from the recital rounds and the final – stormed the pop charts in his native South Korea and led to an exclusive contract for the artist with Deutsche Grammophon in January 2016. The victory at the 18th International Chopin Piano Competition in 2021 went to the then 24-year-old Canadian pianist Bruce Liu. Like Seong-Jin Cho before him, Liu has since enjoyed great success on the concert stage and in the recording studio and has signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon.

Eric Lu, piano

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 Winner of the 19th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition Warsaw 2025 (Live)