Pianist Eric Lu rose to prominence in the 2010s as a teenager through a string of major competition victories that led to his signing with Warner Classics. Born on December 15, 1997, in Bedford, Massachusetts, on the northwestern edge of Boston, he had parents who originated from Shanghai, China, and Kaohsiung, Taiwan. His initial instruction came at age six from local teacher Dorothy Shi, after which he enrolled at the preparatory high school of the New England Conservatory. Early recognition arrived with his 2004 victory at the International Fryderyk Chopin Competition for Young Pianists in Moscow, followed by a win the next year at the U.S. National Chopin Competition in Miami. At the 2015 International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, he placed fourth; few teenagers had reached the finals before, and earlier standouts such as Daniil Trifonov and Krystian Zimerman later achieved leading careers. One of his final-round offerings, Chopin’s 24 Preludes—an especially demanding selection—was released by the Fryderyk Chopin Institute, and he joined fellow laureates on a tour of South Korea and Japan. In 2017 he captured another major honor, the International German Piano Award in Frankfurt, and the following year he took first prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition in Britain.
That success brought him onto the Warner Classics roster, which issued his Leeds readings of Beethoven and Chopin in 2018; the same year he recorded an album of late-period pieces by Mozart, Schubert, and Brahms for Genuin. He performed with the Hallé Orchestra and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, presented solo recitals in London, Paris, and St. Petersburg, and undertook a solo tour of South Korea. In 2019 he appeared at London’s Wigmore Hall and the Leipzig Gewandhaus, and he made his BBC Proms debut with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. Further significant debuts followed in 2022 and 2023, among them a three-concert engagement with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra led by Riccardo Muti in October 2022 and three nights with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Earl Lee in April 2023. By then Warner Classics had issued additional recordings from him, including a 2022 collection of Schubert piano sonatas.
