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Eric Lu in Leipzig · The Piano Maven with Jed Distler

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  This is Jed Distler and welcome to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano
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  recordings.
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  And I want to thank you for subscribing to this podcast via my sub stack page for the
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  Piano Maven.
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  We've had a good number of paid subscribers coming on board and I really thank you from
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  the bottom of my heart.
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  And I thank free subscribers as well, although if you do take out a paid subscription, you
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  get all kinds of goodies such as our Piano Maven Zoom Hangout meetings where we will
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  be listening to recordings and talking about all kinds of piano issues, performances, concerts,
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  trends, competitions, you name it.
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  So please consider subscribing to the Piano Maven to keep this podcast in production and
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  you can see a link to how to subscribe in the episode description.
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  Moving on, normally on this podcast, I discuss commercial recordings and some of you have
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  written asking about live piano performances that turn up on YouTube or else performances
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  that are uploaded in news groups that are devoted to live broadcasts for the most part.
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  So I thought that this would be a good idea to pursue every now and then, even though
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  one reason that I really do want to focus on commercial releases is that so we can support
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  the record companies who are putting a lot of money into new releases and reissues and
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  we put a lot of money into that as well as consumers.
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  Yet at the same time when certain recordings that we might want to hear happen to be out
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  of print or they are extremely difficult to source, then that's where websites such as
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  archive.org come in very handy.
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  I am a big fan of archive.org.
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  It contains one of the largest depositories of recordings available for streaming or to
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  download for free and I often go there in search of unusual, obscure, or out of print
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  items to play on my weekly radio show Between the Keys.
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  For instance, there are boatloads of out of print piano recordings that only came out
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  on LP that people have uploaded onto archive.org.
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  Now the quality of the transfers are very variable so you have to be really aware.
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  Like sometimes you'll get the scratchiest worn out copies of certain LPs uploaded.
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  That also goes for the gazillions of old 78s that people upload to archive.org.
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  But recently on this site I've been stumbling upon some live concerts with pianists which
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  I guess have been sourced from audience recordings or maybe from broadcasts.
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  Again, the sound quality is variable so it's really hard to know what the source material
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  is.
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  But when it comes to this website you just have to be patient and you just keep on digging
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  and listening and figuring things out.
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  There's one concert that I recently hit upon while exploring archive.org that I want to
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  talk about on this episode.
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  It features the pianist Eric Lu.
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  He first came to my attention in 2015 when he won fourth prize as one of the finalists
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  in the Warsaw Chopin Competition.
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  And three years later in 2018 the 20 year old pianist won first prize in the 2018 International
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  Leads Competition.
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  And then he signed with Warner Classics.
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  In fact I was hired to write the booklet notes for his Warner Classics solo debut CD which
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  contained the 24 Chopin Preludes Opus 28 and I think yeah yeah yeah definitely contain
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  works of Brahms and Schumann.
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  I don't have that disc right in front of me but I do remember writing the notes for it.
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  I did write the notes for it but I didn't get the audio at the time when I was writing
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  the notes.
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  Anyway Eric Lu has gone on to a very respectable and very busy career and I can't say that
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  I have been following his activities with any consistency but I've always enjoyed his
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  playing and I admire the strong personality that always comes through the playing.
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  So when I was recently browsing through archive.org I found that someone had posted mp3 files
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  containing a recital that Eric Lu gave in Leipzig Germany on July 2nd 2022.
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  It sounds like a decent audience recording to my ears although maybe it could have been
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  broadcast but you still get a sense from listening to this of how Eric Lu projects his big singing
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  sonority in a concert venue.
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  The recital starts with a beautifully played and well characterized interpretation of Schumann's
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  Waldsehnen Opus 82 the forest scenes.
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  I love this cycle.
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  And Eric Lu really sets the right atmosphere in these pieces maybe not to such magical
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  effect as in the old Svyatoslav Richter studio recording from the 50s or more recently that
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  marvelous live recording that was on Sony Classics with Arkady Volodos.
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  That's a fantastic Waldsehnen.
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  But Eric Lu gives a lovely performance all the same.
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  I really enjoyed it.
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  And then he plays the Brahms theme and variations in D minor that the composer arranged from
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  his original string sextet scoring.
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  This is great great Brahms playing from the bottom up and you hear full and shapely bass
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  lines that support the soaring right hand melody lines that Eric Lu spins out throughout.
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  The performance sounds full bodied instead of thick to my ears.
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  And I also think that Eric Lu makes the most assiduous and seamless transitions.
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  And this really imparts an unassailable unity to the interpretation.
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  Very very impressive.
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  However, Eric Lu becomes much more subjective over the course of Chopin's piano sonata
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  number two, the funeral march sonata.
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  In the first movement he alternately stretches out phrases but he also indulges in sudden
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  dynamic surges and accelerations that normally you would think would fragment the structure
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  and kind of render the movement all over the place.
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  But somehow this freewheeling approach seems more organic in Eric Lu's hands, at least
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  in this performance.
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  Maybe less so in the scherzo where I think some of the retards and some of the emphatic
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  broadening at phrase ends kind of belabor the obvious.
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  But the freedom with which Eric Lu plays that trio section, you know, you forgive my singing.
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  What I was going to say was that the freedom with which he plays this trio section is justified
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  by a really strong left hand.
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  And you will notice how the left hand contables have such a richness about them.
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  It's almost as if a cello had taken over from the piano.
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  The funeral march movement, though, is definitely on the slow side.
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  I think it's too slow for my taste.
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  But it's a big and epic conception.
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  And if Eric Lu doesn't generate the same kind of excruciating tension that I find absolutely
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  gripping when a pianist like Alexander Gagiev, for example, plays this piece, I admire Eric
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  Lu's resolutely steady pacing.
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  At least he holds your interest.
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  And then he effortlessly, perhaps even offhandedly sails through the finale's fast unison lines.
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  And then as an encore, he gives the slow movement from Mozart's sonata, Kershaw 330.
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  It's a sonata in C major.
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  This slow movement is in F major.
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  This is beautifully modulated pianism.
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  It's often rounded off at phrase ends, and it's very pretty.
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  But I kind of miss the really multi-leveled operatic kind of sensibility that you hear
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  from other pianists.
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  I'm thinking even with Vladimir Horowitz and his Moscow performance.
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  So on balance, this recital with Eric Lu is most enjoyable.
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  I've posted the archive.org link to either stream or download this concert.
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  Although if you download it, you're going to have to tag the files yourself, which is
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  a little bit of a pain in the butt.
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  But anyway, at least you can get the music.
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  So do check out Eric Lu Live in Leipzig on July 2nd, 2022, which you can find on archive.org.
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  This is Jed Disler, and you've been listening to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast
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  guide to piano recordings.
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  Thanks for listening, and I look forward to being with you for the next episode.