On August 30, 2015, 18 year-old American pianist Eric Lu held an all-Chopin concert at the South Pasadena Library. The concert was organized by the Southwest Council of the Chopin Foundation of the United States, established in 2014 by Chris Onzol, and dedicated to the support the young generation of American pianists pursuing their studies and careers in the realm of classical piano. Lu has won various prestigious prizes, including his most recent first prize and concerto prize at the 9th National Chopin Competition in Miami, among other international titles, and he will be competing in this year’s prestigious Chopin Competition in Warsaw.

His remarkable expression and keyboard virtuosity enraptured the concert audience and Polish music scholar, Dr. Maja Trochimczyk, who writes the following:

What I found most extraordinary alluring, was the full emotional span, intensity of expression, diversity of touch, richness of instrumental color, and perfectly crafted large-scale forms.  Of course, keyboard virtuosity… Asked later, what is the most remarkable characteristic of Chopin’s music in his eyes, maybe his favorite, or the hardest or the easiest piece to play, he answered: “Everything is difficult. Chopin is unbelievably difficult, with the complexity of rhythms, internal polyphonies and intertwined melodies, that sing under the fingers, but especially the touch, the infinite variations of sound tone created through touch.”

The cycle op. 28 contains many extremely difficult, dramatic and fast preludes, overflowing with passages of heavy, parallel chords thundering up and down the keyboard. In-between are moments of tranquility, funereal sadness, or whimsy. Mr. Lu exposed the raw richness of emotions, textures, and expressions contained in the whole cycle. In addition to the Raindrop – that I have never heard played so well before, and I heard it almost too many times… (and I played it myself, for my own edification), I would like to single out for praise his interpretations of the charmingly capricious Prelude G Major (No. 3), the extreme brevity of moto perpetuo in D Major (No. 5), the wild and eerie sonorities of the ghostly dark Prelude in E-flat Minor (No. 14)… so well contrasted with the following melancholy serenity of the Raindrop…

Read more of the review at chopinwithcherries.blogspot.com.

[Source: chopinwithcherries.blogspot.com]