Eric Lu and Kate Liu | “Storms of Life”

This recital is produced by the charity PROMOTE OUR PIANISTS working together with KETTNER CONCERTS to offer live performances to outstanding young pianists.

Eric Lu is the First Prize Winner of the 19th International Chopin Piano Competition 2025 in Warsaw. Before that he had won First Prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition in 2018 at the age of 20. Eric’s always thoughtful, poetically imbued and powerful interpretations have already made him one of the most distinctive artists on the international music scene.

Kate Liu, born in Singapore, has garnered international recognition, notably winning the Third Prize at the 17th International Fryderyk Chopin Competition in Warsaw. She also received the Audience Favourite Prize awarded by the Polish public through Polish National Radio. Since then she has toured internationally, performing at some of the world’s most renowned venues and collaborating with orchestras around the globe.

We are privileged to hear them perform for us here for the very first time at the historic Holywell Music Room in Oxford, said to be the oldest purpose-built music room in Europe.

PROGRAMME

Franz Schubert (b. Vienna 1797 – d. Vienna 1828)

• Allegro in A minor, D 947 Lebensstürme (Storms of Life) for piano 4-hands (1828)
• Fantasie in F minor, D 940 for piano 4-hands (1828)

The last works of Schubert, that most poetic of composers, written in an outpouring of creativity just months before his death, transport us through a tumult of emotions: stormy, lyrical, yearning, tranquil and triumphant.

Interval

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (b. Salzburg 1756 – d. Vienna 1791)

• Sonata in D major for 2 pianos, K. 448 (1781)

Mozart dedicated this exhilarating sonata to one of his most talented pupils, Josepha Auernhammer, with whom he enjoyed playing piano-4-hands. Josepha later became a much-admired concert pianist and teacher in Vienna.

Frédéric Chopin (b. Warsaw 1810 – d. Paris 1849)

• Rondo in C major for two pianos, Op. posth. 73. (1828)

Chopin composed this sparkling piece as a work for solo piano while studying at the Warsaw Conservatoire, later rearranging it for two pianos. It was not published until 1855 after his death.

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Host or Publisher The Kettner Society