Schubert: Piano Sonatas D. 784 & 959 Eric Lu

• Franz Schubert (1797 n- 1828): Piano Sonata No. 20 in A Major, D. 959:
• 1 Schubert: Piano Sonata No. 20 in A Major, D. 959: I. Allegro 18:25
• 2 Schubert: Piano Sonata No. 20 in A Major, D. 959: II. Andantino 09:29
• 3 Schubert: Piano Sonata No. 20 in A Major, D. 959: III. Scherzo (Allegro vivace) - Trio (Un poco più lento) 05:58
• 4 Schubert: Piano Sonata No. 20 in A Major, D. 959: IV. Rondo (Allegretto) 13:58
• Allegretto in C Minor, D. 915:
• 5 Schubert: Allegretto in C Minor, D. 915 06:16
• Piano Sonata No. 14 in A Minor, Op. posth. 143, D. 784 "Grande Sonate":
• 6 Schubert: Piano Sonata No. 14 in A Minor, Op. posth. 143, D. 784 "Grande Sonate": I. Allegro giusto 15:12
• 7 Schubert: Piano Sonata No. 14 in A Minor, Op. posth. 143, D. 784 "Grande Sonate": II. Andante 04:44
• 8 Schubert: Piano Sonata No. 14 in A Minor, Op. posth. 143, D. 784 "Grande Sonate": III. Allegro vivace 05:59
• Total Runtime 01:20:01

Info for Schubert: Piano Sonatas D. 784 & 959

“I love Schubert,” writes pianist Eric Lu. “It is difficult to describe how meaningful his music is to me. He was the ultimate artist, in the purest sense of the word. Late in his life, with death staring him down and all his hopes and dreams dashed … he continued to churn out one masterpiece after another. I have come to the conclusion that he is the composer who moves me most intensely.” Lu’s album of Schubert pairs two of his greatest sonatas – D 784 in A minor, written in 1823, and D 959 in A major, written in 1828, the last year of the composer’s short life; complementing them is the Allegretto in C minor D 915, dating from 1827. When Eric Lu won the 2018 Leeds International Piano Competition, the Guardian welcomed him as “one of the most exciting prospects in a long time … a veritable poet of the keyboard.” These words were borne out by the critics’ response to his first Warner Classics album, a programme of Chopin, Schumann and Brahms. International Piano magazine found it “truly magical”, while Fanfare welcomed “a gifted musician … who can probe the depths of the piano literature with poetic sensibilities and imagination.”

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: Piano Sonatas D. 784 & 959