Reviews of Eric Lu's First prize Laureate Recordings of the 19th International Chopin Piano Competition, Warsaw 2025. National Chopin Institute 'Blue Series'. International Chopin Competition and DG
Reviews of the First Prize Laureate Recordings
19th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition
Warsaw 2025
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| Eric Lu |
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NIFCCD 800-801 Eric LuChopin Piano Competition 2025https://sklep.nifc.pl/pl/produkt/77662-eric-lu-chopin-piano-competition-2025 |
Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849)
Eric Lu achieved a richly-deserved first prize despite some public, even surprisingly private, professional musical objections (controversy is often an outcome in this competition). I noticed the overall level of pianism by participants became higher with each competition. All the pianists and musicians from the outset are beyond rational belief gifted. Miracles. All are winners but not all win ....
A journey of rewarding even exciting discovery lies in store for the interpretatively adventurous and musically perceptive pianist searching for his own true voice and what he considers to be that of the composer. Intuition strengthened with knowledge. Heart, intelligence and technique as Vladimir Horowitz once observed.
It is far too easy for a critic and listener to become blasé concerning the tremendous achievements and utterly passionate dedication of these gifted and hugely talented young musicians as they inexorably follow one another. One attempts to judge and differentiate the quality impartially but one's personal temperament, life experience and musical knowledge have power to mold opinion. Often they have had to travel large and inconvenient distances at great expense to a foreign culture in order to participate.
I felt Eric Lu, in registering to enter this monumental competition, against advice, considering the implied risks and his previous successes with Chopin, to be a highly courageous gesture worthy of immense respect. 'Who Dares, Wins' is famously the motto of the British Special Air Service (SAS) during WW II.
Overall, I agreed
with the jury decisions (except perhaps the ex-aequo positions) which were clearly
difficult to achieve given the complex scoring. The result took some 6 hours to
be released at 2.30 am
I have written
enthusiastically about this winner, the remarkably sensitive musician and
outstanding pianist Eric Lu. There are many posts on his art in my
internet Reviewer's Notebook over the last 10 years if you care to search ...
I first heard him at
the Duszniki Zdrój International Chopin Piano Festival in 2015 after
achieving 4th place at the age of 17 in the International Chopin Competition of
2015. At that time I termed him a 'poet of the piano', an identity he has
regained after it seemed to fade a little over intervening years in the glowing
successes and many performances of his subsequent distinguished career.
http://www.michael-moran.com/2015/07/70th-international-chopin-piano.html
The music of Chopin enters chambers of the heart and soul no other composer comes near to touching.
One makes a very personal and intimate judgement on his music. I know of no other composer, national or otherwise, who produces such an emotionally passionate and intense response.
In the horrifying world conflagrations and moral bankruptcy of modern times engulfing us, faith, spiritual nourishment, integrity and emotional consolation are of utmost importance. The universal music of Chopin has become once again a profoundly meaningful expression of living truth in humanity.
[As my reviews follow the example of the London Review of Books in terms of appropriate length and detail, I suggest you read them on a tablet or laptop.]
Ballade in F minor, Op. 52 (Round I)
This is one of the finest and subtle interpretations of this transcendent composition I have heard. In many ways it opens the portals to Lu's Chopinesque mind vision, the exploration of a great spiritual garden which continues throughout this quite remarkable recording. Such profound musical penetration could only have come from deep and prolonged study and musical experience of playing the works of the great Polish genius. We are taken one dimension deeper than most pianists and musicians transport us in the music of Chopin.
For everyone in Chopin's day, the ballad was an epic literary work. That which had been rejected in severe Classical high poetry, now came to the fore: a world of extraordinary, inexplicable, mysterious, fantastical and irrational events inspired by a more popular imagination. In Romantic poetry, the ballad became a ‘programmatic’ genre. It was here that the real met the surreal.
Mickiewicz gave his own definition: ‘The ballad is a tale spun from the incidents of everyday (that is, real) life or from chivalrous stories, animated by the strangeness of the Romantic world, sung in a melancholy tone, in a serious style, simple and natural in its expressions’.
Penetrating the expressive core of the Chopin Ballades requires an understanding of the influence of a generalized view of the literary, musical and operatic balladic genres of the time. Not a simple task of time travel. In the musical structure there are parallels with sonata form but Chopin basically invented entirely new musical material. I have always felt it helpful to consider the Chopin Ballades as miniature operas being played out in absolute music, forever exercising one's musical imagination.
Chopin possesses an unrivaled position as Poland’s national composer and its musical wieszcz (poet, balladeer and prophet). This is particularly obvious in the musically narrative Ballades. His music is the beating heart of the nation. The great Polish poet Cyprian Norwid (1821–83) described Chopin as ‘a Varsovian by birth, a Pole by heart, and a citizen of the world by talent’.
Virtuoso brilliance, a supreme gift for melody and an air of sentimentality explain his immense appeal on a popular level. But more deeply the universality of Chopin lies in the sense of loss and nostalgia for his homeland. Contained within his intense music is patriotic resistance to domination, a feeling of sacrifice and melancholy in the face of ‘the bitter finales of life’ – all universal human emotions. ‘Chopin’s music was a kind of cultural battle-ground in the nineteenth century, prey to appropriation.’
I received from Lu the mental painting of a reflective wanderer strolling, sometimes hurrying in passionate embrace and memory through the landscape of his life. Marcel Proust's madeleine cake remembrances but expressed in music. Chopin seems to reflect on the mystery of his entire life, examining and judging its intense joys, sorrows and moments of resignation to destiny.
And so this magnificent opera of life passes through the various phases of age, innocence and experience, painted by Lu in polyphonic sound with the rich and luminous sound palette provided by the modern Fazioli. I was put in mind of this same Ballade outstandingly recorded by the highly sensitive and gifted Chopiniste, Dimitry Ablogin. However, he chose the unique, period sound spectrum from Chopin's final Pleyel instrument of 1848.
The pure, simple melodic innocence of the opening that Lu grants us, prepares the spirit in a poignant manner for the polyphonic, emotional turbulence that then follows, carried aloft as we are by his persuasive phrasing, subtle dynamic variation and rubato. This rare experience was an augmentation to what I felt was the deep philosophical penetration of the piece by Lu. It was as if one chapter after another of a linked, profound spiritual and musical travel journey was opening in his mind before us.
Préludes op.28 (Round II)
Prelude in A major Op. 28 No. 7
Prelude in F sharp minor Op. 28 No. 8
Prelude in E major Op. 28 No. 9
Prelude in C sharp minor Op. 28 No. 10
Prelude in B major Op. 28 No. 11
Prelude in G sharp minor Op. 28 No. 12
A particularly outstanding performance of this set of Preludes. I first heard Eric Lu in 2015 at Duszniki Zdrój Festival. Below is in part what I wrote about his Preludes then, long before his career took flight. My feelings have only become deeper as his maturity grew.
He chose to perform the great and demanding cycle of Chopin Preludes Op.28. I could not possibly give an account of each prelude nor would it be desirable in review of this nature.
During the Duszniki Zdroj International Chopin Festival there is always a 'Duszniki Moment' that is unique. One can never anticipate when it might occur or what nature it might take, be it pianistic, scandalous or highly amusing. But it will occur...this was the moment for me but will there be another?
First of all the tone Eric Lu produced was luminous, the articulation spellbinding and exciting, the legato and bel canto desperately moving. Notes were articulated as flowing water or as 'strings of pearls'. Even if this phrase smacks of cliche, this is what he did - every note of the score fully articulated.
The reminiscence of a Horowitz sound if not a Horowitz temperament seemed inescapable. One could hear a pin drop in the dworek. The playing was breathtaking and really of the highest order of finger dexterity. In the background I could hear the refined sound world produced by one of his teachers, Dan Thai Son (and you know my opinion of this great artist).
It would have course been impossible for Chopin to have ever considered performing this complete radical cycle in his musical and cultural ambiance (not least because of the brevity of many of the pieces). Although it is now well established as a complete work, a masterpiece of integrated ‘fragments’ (in the nineteenth century sense of that aesthetic term). Each can of course stand on its own as a perfect miniature landscape of feeling and tonal climate but ‘Why Preludes? Preludes to what?’ as André Gide asked. I think it unnecessary and superfluous to actually answer this question. We must turn to Chopin’s love of Bach to at least partially understand them (he took an edition of the ‘48’ to Mallorca where he completed the Preludes). I think it was Anton Rubinstein who first performed them as a cycle but I stand to be corrected on this.
The sound world of each as Lu produced it was simply stunning and breathtaking. A 'leaping to the feet' moment. Here was a 17 year old with a magnificently precocious talent and pianistic future ahead. Depth with growing maturity is inevitable in life as we all know...
As always, I felt the magnificent bass resonance in the left hand of many of the Preludes on the Steinway in the small dworek, which occasionally unbalanced the musical writing. This does not detract from the Lu's amazing execution. It is just that some of their 'Prelude egos' were inflated rather than retaining the intimacy which waxes and wanes so fleetingly and poetically until that final passionate utterance in D minor of No. 24, traditionally the 'key of death'. The last three notes (the lowest D on the piano) Lu played with his fist which for me visually gave expression expression to the lines by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas in his poem Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night which could apply to the spirit of the cycle as a whole:
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
They were written in a period of great emotional upheaval for Chopin. I have always felt a Pleyel in the right hands is the perfect instrument for a poetic rather than virtuosic interpretation of the Preludes. After all he had a Pleyel pianino sent to Valldemossa. Not a popular manner of rendering them....'
I have written on this site extensively concerning the Preludes if you are inclined to read further ....
http://www.michael-moran.com/2025/11/some-thoughts-on-chopin-preludes-during.html
Polonaise-Fantaisie Op.61 (Final Round)
The programmers had intelligently contrasted this 'late' work, the Polonaise-Fantaisie (1846), with the earlier concertos (1830) to hear the acquired range of Chopin style and interpretation over time
Before listening and reading the review please read these few important contextual and cultural observations on the Polonaise-Fantaisie and concerto.
It is interesting and helps to somewhat complete the interpretative picture
The Polonaise-Fantaisie contains all the troubled emotion and desire for strength in the face of the multiple adversities that beset the composer at this late stage in his life. This work, the first in the so-called ‘late style’ of the composer, was written during a period of great suffering and unhappiness. He laboured over its composition. What emerged is one of his most complex of his works both pianistically and emotionally.
Chopin produced many sketches for the Polonaise-Fantaisie and wrestled with the title. He wrote: ‘I’d like to finish something that I don’t yet know what to call’. This uncertainty surely indicates he was embarking on a journey of compositional exploration along untrodden paths. Even Bartok one hundred years later was shocked at its revolutionary nature. The work is an extraordinary mélange of genres and styles in a type of inspired improvisation that yet maintains a magical absolute musical coherence and logic.
Chopin leads us through a succession of extraordinary scenes and events. The fantasy element of the work is prominent so that we receive a spontaneous 'searching' improvisational survey within the composition which clearly offered Chopin many psychological obstacles. They pass in successive train through the imagination of any listener or pianist who can selflessly give himself in a meditative trance to this hypnotic music, the composition flickering on the screen of the mind. I feel one has an imaginative experience bordering on the cinematic.
Chopin completed it in August 1846. The reception was one of confusion and even upset. As Jachimecki stated: ‘the piano speaks here in a language not previously known’. Frederick Niecks’s judgment was that the Polonaise-Fantasy ‘stands, on account of its pathological contents, outside the sphere of art’.
The work reminds me incontrovertibly of lines from Byron's poem of 1816
The Dream
A change came o’er the spirit of my dream
The Wanderer was alone as heretofore,
The beings which surrounded him were gone,
Or were at war with him; he was a mark
For blight and desolation, compass’d round
With Hatred and Contention; Pain was mix’d
In all which was served up to him, until,
Like to the Pontic monarch of old days,
He fed on poisons, and they had no power,
But were a kind of nutriment; he lived
And made him friends of mountains: with the stars
And the quick Spirit of the Universe
(excerpt)
 Lord Byron's Dream (1827) Sir Charles Lock Eastlake PRA (1793 – 1865) |
Lu began with a statement of psychological security that soon began to disintegrate as the improvised 'searching' for a path through the forest of life took flight. Finally the composer found his direction. Lu was most impressive as his fertile imagination created fantasies of different orders that came and went. The emotional disturbance continued to build as the fantasy landscapes folded over one another. Scarcely perceptible dreams appeared and dissolved in brilliant panorama. The rising emotions caused Lu to increase the tempo and dynamics allusively. He expressed a passionate feeling of that untranslatable Polish word żal (melancholic regret leading to a mixture of passionate resistance, resentment and anger in the face of unavoidable fate). A fine, mature and moving performance.
Polonaise in F sharp minor Op. 44 (Round II)
In the nineteenth century, F-sharp minor was often considered a dark, melancholic, and expressive key, particularly in the Romantic era, but it also presented technical and compositional challenges for a composer. It was used to convey a wide range of emotions, from passion and grief to introspection. The key Chopin chose for this polonaise expressed intense emotion and extended the boundaries of classical form.
Lu gave us a powerful interpretation of this monumental polonaise. The lyrical interludes were creatively contrasted with the muscular forward-driven anger and resistance with much żal in evidence. Lu developed the work into a final statement of tragic triumph.
Waltz in A major Op.42 (Round I)
I felt this could have been far lighter, stylish and with the dancing grace and affectations of the period. The great conductor Erich Kleiber had a profound understanding of the civilization and charm of the Viennese waltz rhythm, the opening 'call to the floor'. His expressive phrasing and variable dynamics and tempo were always most affecting such as in his recording of the Blue Danube and powerful sense of a majestic and picturesque flowing river,
The Chopin waltz really requires the pianist to visit museums in Paris and Vienna and learn of the precieux attitudes, manners and affected atmosphere of high society and the aristocracy in those places at that time. Chopin also invested his waltzes with intense nostalgia for this grand, cosmetic superficiality. Dinu Lipatti understood this well as did Micaela Isulaesa. These remarks could apply to the vast majority of the young participants, not only Eric Lu. Most were not really in psychic touch with the sensibility of that age so different to our own.
Piano Sonata in B minor Op. 58 (Round III)
Written in 1844, this sonata is one of the greatest masterpieces in the canon of Western piano music. The Allegro maestoso opening was suffused with majestic nobility as we began the journey through this great opera of life. The opening was dramatic but revealed poetry and moving lyricism.
One should feel that Chopin was embracing the cusp of Romanticism, yet at the same time hearkening back to classical restraint - le climat de Chopin as his favourite pupil Marcelina Czartoryska described it. The Trio did have a beautiful legato cantabile that made the piano sing. The cantabile melody within was intensely beautiful but avoided any tempting sentimental indulgence. There was an extraordinary cohesiveness in his conception of this highly complex work. Moods changed from mere consciousness to anger into a variety of lyrical resignation.
Lu opened the sonata dramatically and polyphonically but with immense clarity and controlled power which is a hallmark of his execution at the keyboard.
The Scherzo was executed with delicate velocity revealed by the glistening articulation. Lu was capable of being energetic yet with a Mendelssohnian atmosphere of Queen Mab lightness. Nevertheless, dark ghosts hovered above but any apprehension of threat was dispelled with his changes of mood. The Trio again displayed a warm Chopin cantabile.
The emotionally difficult transition to the Largo was accomplished expressively but for me with rather too heavy a dynamic for temperamental emphasis he intended. Here we then began an exquisite extended nocturne-like musical voyage, a narrative tone poem taking us through a night of meditation and introspective thought. This great musical narrative was a spellbinding tapestry of emotional landscape. We travelled through an extended and challenging harmonic structure, presented as a poem of the reflective heart and spirit. I felt his playing was tonally refined in truth and integrity. Lu transported us with spiritual introspection, enveloping us in a mellifluous dream world.
The Finale. Presto ma non tanto (carefully observed unlike many others) was tremendously powerful expression in its headlong flight though the threats and obstacles that life heartlessly throws up before us. From dream, we were brutally thrown into the forces of life. He approached this movement with tremendous virtuosity which benefits its emotional impact. It rose not unlike a rhapsodic narrative Ballade in character. Marvelous, poetic, lyric phrasing gave the movement irresistible forward impetus. We were transported majestically, yet passionately, to the conclusion. Again Tomaszewski cannot be bettered:
Thereafter, in a constant Presto (ma non troppo) tempo and with the expression of emotional perturbation (agitato), this frenzied, electrifying music, inspired (perhaps) by the finale of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony…’
Concerto n°2 in F minor Op. 21 (Final Round)
Some important cultural context and my own views
concerning the F minor Piano Concerto Op.21 before listening to the live
recording reading the review
The Concerto in F minor Op. 21 is the fruit of youthful compositional spontaneity. Despite the differing opus numbers it was composed first, before the E-minor concerto Op.11. Written on the wave of Chopin's Vienna success, it gives the impression of a matter of extraordinary consistency, shaped with dramatic logic and consistency, without unnecessary dilemmas.
His E minor concerto Op.11 was successfully performed and highly acclaimed at a 'farewell' concert on 11th October 1830. This event took place only three weeks before Chopin left Warsaw on 2nd November 1830. One young singer in the performance was Konstancja Gładkowska, his distant ideal. Chopin wrote as descriptively as always: ‘Dressed becomingly in white, with roses in her hair, she sang the cavatina from [Rossini’s] La donna del lago as she had never sung anything, except for the aria in (Paer’s) Agnese. You know that “Oh, quante lagrime per te versai”. She uttered "tutto desto” to the bottom B in such a way that Zieliński (an acquaintance) held that single B to be worth a thousand ducats’.
The trunk for the journey is bought, scores corrected, handkerchiefs hemmed… Nothing left but to bid farewell, and most sadly’. Konstancja and Frycek exchanged rings. She had packed an album in which she had written the words ‘while others may better appraise and reward you, they certainly can’t love you better than we’. Only two years later, Chopin added: ‘they can’ which speaks volumes.The subsequent November 1830 saw uprising burst upon the city. ‘
An introductory book on the concertos and their context I cannot recommend more highly:
Chopin - The Piano Concertos by the jury member John Rink
(Cambridge Music Handbooks 1997)
* * * * * * * * * *
The fascinating document below is extracted from
Friederike Müller: Letters from Paris 1839–1845
It is an account of Chopin's teaching and surroundings in the light of the correspondence of his favorite student Friederike Müller
(Presently only published in Polish by the Fryderyk Chopin Institute, Warsaw, 2022)
Please excuse the solecisms in translation as it involves French, German, Polish and English !
* * * * * * * * * *
Friederike Müller was one of Chopin’s favourite and most talented pupils. In 231 letters written to her aunts in Vienna, gives detailed accounts of her life in Paris. She writes (sometimes in highly critical terms) about artists, concerts, pianos and musical novelties, sketching out, in a way that is filled with youthful wit and temperament, a remarkably vivid picture of Parisian musical and social life in the early 1840s.
Above all, however, she gives vivid and detailed descriptions of nearly every one of the 70 or so lessons she had with Chopin and quotes verbatim many of the conversations she had with him. Therein lies the extraordinary character of this material: this is not an account given a long time after, like the testimonies of other pupils, often based on recollections seen in a better light; it is one that conveys her immediate, fresh and unembellished experiences.
Her remarks concerning Chopin's lessons on the solo version of the F minor concerto have particular significance for any executant of this demanding work.
Fryderyk Chopin observed of his Concerto in F minor Op.21:
'There are people with whom studying this is impossible for me'
Dear Aunt Sophie, please pray that Chopin might remain healthy, kind and contented with me. I want to work with all my soul, head and heart, then everything will turn out well’ (from a letter to Sophie Müller of 30–31 August 1840)
'The concerto in F minor is wonderful [...]. The Adagio is sublime! And thanks to its kindness, I will be able to play it in full sound even without an orchestra. Lately, I said that choosing between his two Concertos is painful for me. One is worth the other - he said - and both are worthless. And I assure Aunt that he not only says so, but he really thinks so.'
Letter from Friederike Müller, dated Paris, Sunday, November 1, 1840.
We have the comfort that we can disagree with Chopin about the assessment of his piano concertos. Refusing them value, we would deprive ourselves of the most beautiful pages of music from the first half of the 19th century.
However, the dilemma of his students - also our privilege - can be resolved in favor of the Concerto in F minor op. 21, using a quote from Schumann: 'the second concerto, which we all together barely reach, we can only kiss its edge.'
He wrote these words in 1836, already after the publication of the work, accompanied by a dedication 'to Countess Delfina Potocka née de Komar'. It is symptomatic that six years after the completion of the Concerto there is no trace of the youthful fascination in it, of which Chopin confessed in letters to Tytus Woyciechowski. Later biographies are attached to this thread like a burr... The 'Ideal' (that is, the unfortunate Konstancja Gładkowska), which Fryderyk dreamed of for half a year, 'for which Adagio was erected' (Chopin always titled the Larghetto 'Adagio'), passed with the wind from Warsaw and never returned. But the Concerto in F minor - the quintessence of romantic virtuosity and emotional lightness, the embodiment of beauty - remained.
Its premiere took place on March 17, 1830, at the National Theatre. An anonymous reviewer (probably Wojciech Grzymała) in Kurier Polski summed up the mastery of the work: 'In addition to originality, beautiful singing, great and bold passages applied to the nature of the instrument, decorated in vivid colors of feeling and fire, finally, the combination of all this into one whole, constitute the main feature of his composition.' The extraordinary work, practically without precedent, entered not only Polish but also European piano literature.
The Concerto in F minor op. 21 is the fruit of youthful compositional spontaneity. Written on the wave of Vienna success, it gives the impression of a matter of extraordinary consistency, shaped with dramatic logic and consistency, without unnecessary dilemmas.
Chopin juxtaposed the classical, three-part form with contrasting and complementing elements: a sonata-like Allegro (Maestoso), captured in the form of a Larghetto song, and a dance-like rondo. If the theme of the first part was marked with seriousness, it is far from tragedy, although the main key would suggest such an affect. The third part (Allegro vivace), although not afraid of sentimentality, predominantly emanates joyful playfulness, fixed in the cheerful F major key.
The essence of the Concerto in F minor, however, is its central part - almost unearthly, poeticized - the culmination of emotions and feelings. Chopin offers the listener a certain programme - first leading him astray, 'lulling' him with idyllic, nocturnal moods, tempting him with cantilena fiorituras and rocking rhythms. Therefore, with incredible energy, a recitative melody explodes against the background of tremolando - in this culmination there is everything, including ecstasy. And then, as if nothing had happened, the music returns to the dreamy, initial aura. The Larghetto was enthusiastically received already during the first performance and to this day belongs to the most brilliant pages of European romanticism. Liszt saw in it 'ideal perfection'.
On Saturday and Sunday (October 31 - November 1, 1840), Friederike Müller wrote a letter to 'dear, good Aunt Lotte'. At Tuesday's lesson, she played the Concerto in F entirely by heart.
Chopin was pleasantly surprised by this. He commented: 'How is it, do you already play it by heart? [...] so let's start, but everything, even tutti. I played it. I'm sorry, but that's not what it's about - he said - you play it like a solo, and I want to hear the orchestra as best as possible; this is a completely different style - I will try to play it for you. Saying this, he played tutti for me, accentuating just like an orchestra'.
A week later, on November 7, 1840, 'dear, good Aunt Sopherl' reported on the course of the next, Thursday's lesson: "Oh, let's take my Adagio right away - he announced, so I started playing it. I accompanied the recitative according to the score with my left hand and fortunately Chopin liked it, but he changed a few places. Then I played those places one by one, imitating him. I have never taught this way and I don't want to show it to anyone. Only you will be able to play this Adagio in my way. [...] - You see - said Chopin - there are people with whom studying this is impossible for me. If you don't understand me completely, that's it. There are still those who simply play me the notes, and those who manage to grasp some sense. I listen to them, but I would like to finally show you all the subtleties of the style, so that you convey my thought as I conceived it, and that pleases me".
Friederike must have been extremely happy to hear such compliments from her beloved teacher. And we have evidence that the Concerto in F minor op. 21 functioned in Chopin's pedagogical practice and, importantly, was played in its entirety in the solo version.
The printed edition from 1836 was arranged so that the entire musical content of the work was placed on two staves (in the classical notation layout) - both all orchestral tutti (reduced) and the solo part, highlighted with a different font. The verbal markings tutti and solo introduced additional structural-formal divisions. In the most important places, the parts of wind instruments were also indicated. Friederike must have used such an edition.
Chopin, in one of the copies of the Concerto in F minor, belonging to Jane Stirling, proposed his own version of the accompaniment in the middle section of the second part (mm. 45-72) for use in solo performances. It is interesting to what extent it differed from what Friederike suggested on Thursday, November 5, 1840, in Paris...
Review of Eric Lu's performance of the Chopin Concerto in F minor Op.21 with the
Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra
and
Andrzej Boreyko (conductor)
The Maestoso opening was highly expressive and Lu gave it deep melodic meaning. Expressive episodes were joined as if to create a seamless narrative. There was close cooperation between conductor, orchestra and soloist. Drama built in intensity for the piano part and Lu's eloquent phrasing and style brillante, so influenced by Hummel, carried us forward with uninterrupted momentum.
The Larghetto betrayed affecting moderation and did not indulge the sentiments, however tempting that is - almost impossible to resist with one of the greatest love songs ever written. I felt the rising passions of rejection as grim reality began to lightly strike the surface of his lyrical dreamworld. This almost perfumed atmosphere of Eden's garden subsided as is the nature of dream time in illusioned youth. Lu created graceful and radiant fiorituras which make this movement so tenderly resplendent (decorative embellishments named after flowers in Italian).
The Allegro vivace was attractively and creatively phrased in the manner of literate musical speech (rarely heard). Expressive arabesques played across fields of dancing sunflowers.The bassoon obbligato was full of minimal charms and the hunting call on the French horn, the cor de chasse, was most rousing and correct. Lu's style brillant again created real electricity in the air and his dynamic variations added 'emotional spice'. He achieved tremendous clarity of sound with an enlivening and secure pulse. This was a true Allegro vivace !!
I thought he must win this competition or come close to it.
Tremendously enthusiastic applause and cheering filled the hall!
The other works performed by Eric Lu in the competition have been released on DG
International Chopin Piano Competition winner Eric Lu released his new album featuring live recordings of his performances at this year’s competition. The album will be the third release of its kind, marking a continuing partnership between DG and the Fryderyk Chopin Institute, which has organises and hosts the Chopin Competition. The American pianist was awarded first prize by the jury in Warsaw on 20 October, following the final round of the competition. The awards gala and prize-winners’ concerts were held at the hall between 21 and 23 October, with the pianists joined by the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Andrzej Boreyko in the concerto performances. Lu will now undertake a tour of some of the world’s most prestigious venues. “I’m so grateful for this honour,” says the pianist, “grateful to all the Chopin lovers around the world who watched online, to the audience here in Warsaw, and to the jury for bestowing this honour on me. This is a dream come true.” * * * * * * * * * * * * |
Waltz No. 7 in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 64 No. 2 (Round II)
This was a unique interpretation to my mind and essentially moving in unusually nostalgic, emotional scope. Accomplished technique was placed at the service of charm, reflection and elegance in this waltz, wherein Lu captured Chopin's remembered period sensibility to perfection, unlike many other participants.
Nocturne No. 7 in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 27 No. 1 (Round I)
We were taken into another dimension of musical resonance almost immediately by Lu's superb tone production and refinement of touch on the Fazioli. The emotional tensions and relaxations were expressively carried and deeply felt by the pianist.
Nadia Boulanger was once asked what made a great as opposed to an excellent performance of a piano work. She answered 'I cannot tell you that. It is something I cannot describe in words. A magical element descends.'
This remark could not be more appropriate applied to this fine performance. Lu created a dream atmosphere which descended over us like the shadowed wings of a nightingale. This dream becomes a rhythm of longing. Chopin chooses sadness because he cannot find the joy he loves. Almost uncontrollable emotional agitation rises wildly yet organically like all emotion does. This nocturne was performed with both tenderness, sensitivity yet with intense żal.
Mazurkas Op. 56 Nos 1-3 (Round III)
One needs to examine the nature of dancing in Warsaw during the time of Chopin. Almost half of his music is actually dance music of one sort or another and a large proportion of the rest of his compositions contain dances.
Dancing was a passion especially during carnival from Epiphany to Ash Wednesday. It was an opulent time, generating a great deal of commercial business, no less than in Vienna or Paris. Dancing - waltzes, polonaises, mazurkas - were a vital part of Warsaw social life, closely woven into the fabric of the city. There was veritable 'Mazurka Fever' in Europe and Russia at this time. The dancers were not restricted to noble families - the intelligentsia and bourgeoisie also took part in the passion.
Chopin's experience of dance, as a refined gentleman of exquisite manners, would have been predominantly urban ballroom dancing with some experience of peasant hijinks during his summer holidays in Żelazowa Wola, Szafania and elsewhere. Poland was mainly an agricultural society in the early nineteenth century. At this time Warsaw was an extraordinary melange of cultures. Magnificent magnate palaces shared muddy unpaved streets with dilapidated townhouses, szlachta farms, filthy hovels and teeming markets.
By 1812 the Napoleonic campaigns had financially crippled the Duchy of Warsaw. Chopin spent his formative years during this turbulent political period and the family often escaped the capital to the refuge of the Mazovian countryside at Żelazowa Wola. Here the fields are alive with birdsong, butterflies and wildflowers. On summer nights the piano was placed in the garden and Chopin would improvise eloquent melodies that floated through the orchards and across the river to the listening villagers gathered beyond.
Of course he was a perfect mimic, actor, practical joker and enthusiastic dancer as a young man, tremendously high-spirited. He once wrote a verse describing how he spent a wild night, half of which was dancing and the other half playing pranks and dances on the piano for his friends. They had great fun! One of his friends took to the floor pretending to be a sheep! On one occasion he even sprained his ankle he was dancing so vigorously!
He would play with gusto and 'start thundering out mazurkas, waltzes and polkas'. When tired and wanting to dance, he would pass the piano over to 'a humbler replacement'. Is it hardly surprising his teacher Józef Elzner and his doctors advised a period of 'rehab' at Duszniki Zdrój to preserve his health which had already begun to show the first signs of failing. This advice may not have been the best for him, his sister Emilia and Ludwika Skarbek, as reinfection was always a strong possibility there. Both were dead not long after their return from the 'cure'.
Many of his mazurkas would have come to life on the dance floor as improvisations. Perhaps only later were they committed to the more permanent art form on paper under the influence and advice of the Polish folklorist and composer Oskar Kolberg. Chopin floated between popular and art music quite effortlessly.
Mazurka No 33 in B major Op. 56 No. 1
Lu began as if improvising to produce variegated scenes of refined immaturity. Ominous clouds appear briefly on the horizon but do not develop.
Mazurka No 34 in C major Op. 56 No. 2
Quite rural in its clipped rhythms and rather exotic oriental harmonic transitions.
Mazurka No 35 in C minor Op. 56 No. 3
Intense nostalgia lies embedded here. Rural dance rhythms with imaginative varied use of colour. In many ways it seemed to me to be a musical beginning of a sad Chekhov short story with a melancholic conclusion, like The Lady with the Little Dog. Lu highlighted the adventurous harmonic transitions of Chopin. The mazurka faded away unsubstantially into the ether ....
Barcarolle in
F-Sharp Major, Op. 60 (Round III)
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| Venice seen by the the Lagoon (1840) J.M.W.Turner (1775 - 1851) |
A fine opening at mezzo-forte which perfectly sets the tonal scene. Chopin was fond of this initial tonal painting 'setting' of a work. There is no sf accident at the wharf before the romantic voyage begins...
Lu brought mellifluous flowing phrasing and polyphony to his reading. He brought a great variety of dynamics and the changing emotional moods of love to our excursion on the lagoon. Clearly he is a poet and artist in addition to being a fine pianist. The coherent structure, so important in this complex work, emerged sotto-voce in watercolours or pastels rather than strident, distinct oils. A foretaste of the 'impressionism' of Debussy who loved this work. Lu's forte even if costumed in passionate agitation never became crude, just a rising of the tide of sensuality of the lovers frictional, imagined emotional disagreement and ensuing reconciliation. A superbly rare aesthetic recreation by Lu....
Polonaise No. 9 in B-Flat Major, Op. 71 No. 2 (Round III)
I must say I love this poet of the piano with his arabesques of expression even in the polonaise. This work written in 1828 rests on the cusp of change. It shows Chopin beginning to introduce personal moods and emotions into his work and move away from conventional expressions created in the shackles of previous forms and genres. This Polonaise seems to be one of the documents of an imminent breakthrough. It was composed in the virtuosic style brillant.
Really, the work is a piece of chamber music for an room of intimate ambience. As Frederick Niecks noted, in Chopin’s music from that time ‘The bravura character is still prominent, but, instead of ruling supreme, it becomes in every successive work more and more subordinate to thought and emotion’. This work admirably reconciles the conventional with the original, the coquetry of the salons with the approaching Romantic watershed (Tomaszewski)
Lu extracted a beautiful tone from the Fazioli. His entire approach to interpretation of the work speaks of an accomplished artist and a deep understanding of the Polish idiom and character of Chopinesque expression..
Piano Sonata
No. 2 in B-Flat Minor Op. 35 (Round II)
I. Grave - Doppio
movimento (Live)
II. Scherzo - Più
lento (Live)
III. Marche
funèbre. Lento (Live)
IV. Finale.
Presto (Live)
The great Polish musicologist Tomaszewski describes the opening movement of this sonata Grave. Doppio movimento perceptively: ‘The Sonata was written in the atmosphere of a passion newly manifest, but frozen by the threat of death.’ A deep existential dilemma for Chopin speaks from these pages written in Nohant in 1839. The pianist, like all of us, must go one dimension deeper to plumb the terrifying abyss that this sonata opens at our feet.
Lu gave us a satisfying interpretation on both the spiritual and musical levels. The Grave opening announced in a powerful, atmospherically philosophical tone, the dark movements to follow. The Doppio movimento was at a tempo that created anxious premonitions and psychic disturbance despite or perhaps because of the irresistible forward-driving momentum and tempo. The movement rose on waves of dynamic culmination which added to the feeling of uncertainty and fear during an attempt to escape the great reaper pounding close by on horseback.
Lu utilized much dynamic variation and colour, varied articulation, tone and touch in a graphic illustration of human panic. The Scherzo was not so satisfying in its ungraded dynamics. However, the lyrical cantabile second movement subject was expressive of an highly alluring song, yearning for the peace of true love. The return of psychological agitation, culminating in the brief finality of melancholic resignation to fate, was highly successful.
The transition to the Marche funèbre was also almost seamlessly created rather than being a shocking lump of granite dropped in the quarry of the soul. Lu evolved a gradual rise in dynamics as the Marche movement progressed at a moderate tempo towards the earthen vault of the cemetery. Have you ever watched the slow heavy tread of pallbearers as they walk slowly, lurching in group steps towards the graveside on a damp autumn evening, the heavy coffin on their shoulders ? I have.
The central lyrical cantabile was poignantly poetic and became an ethereal glide, our spirit suspended above the dark reality of death. Lu sang us into a type of spiritual ecstasy. The audience were hypnotized into utter silence by this rare experience. One could tangibly feel they were becoming one with Lu, the piano and Chopin's unearthly inspiration.
The Marche funèbre heartrendingly returned at pianissimo dynamic which gradually increased towards the inescapable, lugubrious horror of the crossing the cold waters of the River Styx. The 'dread river of oath' according to Homer in the Iliad. And yet there was philosophical resignation to destiny present here.
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Charon carries Souls across the River Styx
Alexander Dmitrievich Litovchenko (1835-1890)
The Presto was a triumph of tone and touch in its 'chattering' (Chopin's description). With Lu, his rhythmically complex, abstract counterpoint expressed terminal Romantic anguish and grief, almost disciplined hysteria, yet in the baroque idiom. Take Chopin at his word when he observed during a lesson, 'I indicate. It is up to the listener to complete the picture.'
An extraordinary interpretation and performance of the sonata for those who wish and are able to musically travel one dimension deeper than the customary pianistic and musical excursion into the soul.
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Profile of the Reviewer Michael Moran
https://en.gravatar.c atom/mjcmoran#pic-0
As William Wordsworth, the immortal English poet, said of Poetry in the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads :
'Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.'
Chopin is a distillation of poetry ..... and I prefer to recollect my strongest musical emotions after a little time has passed rather than give them the instantaneous gratification of words in that familiar contemporary Facebook surge of coup de foudre feeling
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