Schubert: Impromptus, Op. 90 & 142 Eric Lu

• Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828): 4 Impromptus, Op. 90, D. 899:
• 1 Schubert: 4 Impromptus, Op. 90, D. 899: No. 1 in C Minor 11:34
• 2 Schubert: 4 Impromptus, Op. 90, D. 899: No. 2 in E-Flat Major 05:07
• 3 Schubert: 4 Impromptus, Op. 90, D. 899: No. 3 in G-Flat Major 07:08
• 4 Schubert: 4 Impromptus, Op. 90, D. 899: No. 4 in A-Flat Major 08:47
• 4 Impromptus, Op. Posth. 142, D. 935:
• 5 Schubert: 4 Impromptus, Op. Posth. 142, D. 935: No. 1 in F Minor 11:42
• 6 Schubert: 4 Impromptus, Op. Posth. 142, D. 935: No. 2 in A-Flat Major 08:43
• 7 Schubert: 4 Impromptus, Op. Posth. 142, D. 935: No. 3 in B-Flat Major: Thema 01:58
• 8 Schubert: 4 Impromptus, Op. Posth. 142, D. 935: No. 3 in B-Flat Major: Variation I 01:44
• 9 Schubert: 4 Impromptus, Op. Posth. 142, D. 935: No. 3 in B-Flat Major: Variation II 01:33
• 10 Schubert: 4 Impromptus, Op. Posth. 142, D. 935: No. 3 in B-Flat Major: Variation III 02:39
• 11 Schubert: 4 Impromptus, Op. Posth. 142, D. 935: No. 3 in B-Flat Major: Variation IV 01:51
• 12 Schubert: 4 Impromptus, Op. Posth. 142, D. 935: No. 3 in B-Flat Major: Variation V 02:40
• 13 Schubert: 4 Impromptus, Op. Posth. 142, D. 935: No. 4 in F Minor 07:06
• Total Runtime 01:12:32

Info for Schubert: Impromptus, Op. 90 & 142

Eric Lu is the First Prize Winner of the 19th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition – the highest honour in the world's most prestigious and oldest piano competition. The official award ceremony took place on 20th October 2025 at the Teatr Wielki – National Opera in Warsaw.

“I have a real sense of a journey with these works, in particular with Op. 90, having lived with them intensely in preparation, on stage and, finally, in the recording studio,” he says. “For me, the Impromptus are some of the greatest jewels in the piano literature. They are magnificent, deep pieces of music, and the very essence of Schubert.”

The sense of an inner journey is ever present in the Impromptus, where emotions continually shift and struggle. While the Op. 90 set has, on the surface, a generally equable mood, this feeling is fragile.

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 Schubert: Impromptus, Op. 90 & 142