Eric Lu won both the First Prize and Gold Medal at the 2018 Leeds Piano Competition. The 22-year-old American is a Warner Classics artist and following his first album, containing his winning performance of Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto ('This is a reading that is full of glinting brilliance on the part of Lu – his dexterity is impressive, as is his trilling, and in the more extrovert moments he is in his element' wrote Harriet Smith in Gramophone), he now releases his first solo programme. The bulk of the album is given over to Chopin's Op 28 Preludes. He adds Brahms's late Intermezzo Op 117 No 1 and closes with Schumann's last completed work, the so-called Ghost Variations.

Eric was in London recently during a short UK tour with the Orchestre de Lille and James Jolly caught up with him to talk about the programme, but also to find out about some of Eric's piano heroes ...

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Photo: Benjamin Ealovega