【HKU MUSE House Programme】Leeds International Competition Laureate: Eric Lu Piano Recital
Welcome to the Grand Hall
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Presented by
Supported by
4 OCT 2024 | FRI | 8PM
Grand Hall, The University of Hong Kong
Eric Lu, piano
HANDEL Keyboard Suite No. 5 in E major, HWV 430
Prélude
Allemande
Courante
Air and Five Variations, 'The Harmonious Blacksmith'
SCHUBERT Four Impromptus, D. 935
No. 1 in F minor, Allegro moderato
No. 2 in A-flat major, Allegretto
No. 3 in B-flat major, Theme (Andante) with Variations No. 4 in F minor, Allegro scherzando
- INTERMISSION -
CHOPIN Barcarolle in F-sharp major, Op. 60
CHOPIN Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor, Op. 58
Allegro maestoso
Scherzo. Molto vivace
Largo
Finale. Presto non tanto
Eric Lu won First Prize at The Leeds International Piano Competition in 2018 at the age of 20. The following year, he signed an exclusive contract with Warner Classics and has since collaborated with some of the world's most prestigious orchestras and presented in major recital venues.
Recent and forthcoming orchestral collaborations include the London Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Diego Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Vancouver Symphony, Oslo Philharmonic, Finnish Radio Symphony, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic, Orchestre National de Lille, Royal Philharmonic, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony, Iceland Symphony, Tokyo Symphony, Shanghai Symphony at the Proms, and Yomiuri Nippon Symphony amongst others. Conductors he collaborates with include Riccardo Muti, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, Ryan Bancroft, Marin Alsop, Duncan Ward, Vasily Petrenko, Edward Gardner, Sir Mark Elder, Thomas Dausgaard, Ruth Reinhardt, Earl Lee, Nuno Coehlo, and Martin Frӧst.
Active as a recitalist, he is presented on stages including the Cologne Philharmonie, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Queen Elizabeth Hall London, Leipzig Gewandhaus,
Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, San Francisco Davies Hall, Cal Performances, Aspen Music Festival, BOZAR Brussels, Fondation Louis Vuitton Paris, 92nd St Y in New York, Seoul Arts Center, Chopin and his Europe Festival, Warsaw Philharmonic Hall, and Sala São Paulo. In 2024, he appears for the 6th consecutive year in recital at Wigmore Hall London.
Eric's third album on Warner Classics was released in December 2022, featuring Schubert Sonatas D. 959 and 784. It was met with worldwide critical acclaim, receiving BBC Music Magazine 's Instrumental Choice, writing, "Lu's place among today's Schubertians is confirmed". His previous album of the Chopin 24 Preludes, and Schumann's Geistervariationen was hailed "truly magical" by International Piano
Born in Massachusetts in 1997, Eric Lu first came to international attention as a Laureate of the 2015 Chopin International Competition in Warsaw, aged just 17. He was also awarded the International German Piano Award in 2017, and Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2021. Eric was a BBC New Generation Artist from 2019-22. He is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, studying with Robert McDonald and Jonathan Biss. He was also a pupil of Dang Thai Son, and has been mentored by Mitsuko Uchida and Imogen Cooper. He is now based in Berlin and Boston.
GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL
(1685-1759)
Keyboard Suite No. 5 in E Major, HWV 430
Around the year 1718, Handel, who was then the composer-in-residence at Cannons in Middlesex, composed the Eight Great Suites for harpsichord. The suites were published later as a set in 1720, when Handel took up a new role at the Royal Academy of Music in London. In the preface of the London publication, Handel stated his concern about the circulation of "surreptitious and incorrect copies", revealing his concern over piracy. With a sense of modesty, he also spoke of his 'small talent':
I have been obliged to publish some of the following lessons, because surreptitious and incorrect copies of them had got abroad. I have added several new ones to make the work more useful, which if it meets with a favourable reception; I will still proceed to publish more, reckoning it my duty, with my small talent, to serve a nation from which I have received so generous a protection.
Handel's Suite No. 5 was written in E major, consisting of four movements: Prélude, Allemande, Courante, and Air and Five Variations. The last movement is nicknamed quite famously 'The Harmonious Blacksmith', but this title was not Handel's idea. Different stories have been associated with this nickname: one popular version suggests that Handel once came across a blacksmith humming the melody of the Air and decided to integrate it into the movement. Promoted by Richard Clark in Reminiscences of Handel (1836), this myth has been disputed, even though Clark has suggested a man named William Powell was the blacksmith Handel encountered. The English music historian William Chappell later concluded this story was "pure imagination".
The Air of 'The Harmonious Blacksmith' exists in binary form. The first variation shows the use of chordal arpeggiation on the right hand, and the second variation is characterised by arpeggiated playing on the left hand. The left hand plays the melody in the third variation while the right hand performs dazzling sixteenth triplets; they switch roles in the fourth variation. The final variation of the movement is marked by spectacular scale passages shared by both hands, bringing the suite to a satisfying conclusion in the tonic. Shifting between the tonic and the dominant, it remains harmonically accessible and yet captivating with its brilliant, scalar character.
FRANZ SCHUBERT
(1797-1828)
Four Impromptus, D. 935
Schubert's Four Impromptus D. 935 were written in 1827, the same year when the composer's Impromptus D. 899 were completed. D. 935 was nevertheless left unpublished until 1839 by Anton Diabelli. The term 'impromptu', which suggests a loose sense of improvisation, can be traced back to the Bohemian composer, Jan Vorisek, who published the first impromptu in 1822, although the German composer Johann Baptist Cramer had also written music under this title before. Schubert's impromptus D. 935 were written in F minor, A-flat major, B-flat major, and F minor respectively. Each impromptu displays a distinct mood and a different form. The first exhibits a combination of sonata and rondo elements. The second impromptu shows the form of a minuet-and-trio, whereas the third impromptu is a theme with variations. Musicologist Eva Badura-Skoda considers the form of D. 935 less original than D. 899, but hears the first of the set as "one of the most beautiful pieces in the whole of piano literature" and the second and third impromptus as the only ones that sound an "elegiac Viennese tone". The variation theme of the third impromptu has been identified as one closely related to the Rosamunde theme, a melody quoted also in Schubert's A minor String Quartet, D. 804. Schubert created five variations out of the theme, with the third being a minore variation, in B-flat minor.
Schumann, however, explicitly expressed dissatisfaction specifically with the third impromptu in his review published on December 14, 1838, in Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. Nonetheless, he opined that "If one plays the first two impromptus in succession and joins them to the fourth one, in order to make a lively close, the result may not be a complete sonata, but at least we will have one more beautiful memory of Schubert". The last and fourth impromptu, composed in F minor, is saturated with characteristics of the Hungarian style. The integration of Hungarian inspirations is not too surprising, since Schubert had worked for the Esterházy family in Hungary, once in 1818 and another occasion in 1824. The scherzo-like character of this lively impromptu, accentuated by various effects such as the use of hemiola rhythm that results in exquisite accentuation, delights listeners with musical wit and humour. A sweeping scale descending from the high register to the low, encompassing six full octaves, finishes the piece in the tonic key.
FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN (1810-1849)
Barcarolle in F-sharp major, Op. 60
Composed between 1845 and 1846, just three years before the composer's passing, Barcarolle in F-sharp major seemed to have been one of Chopin's own favourites. Chopin performed the piece quite often in his own concerts in major cities including London and Paris. The genre of the barcarolle can be traced back to the songs of the Venetian gondoliers, although Chopin had never been to Venice himself. The barcarolle in Chopin's hands is sometimes considered a genre that shows some similarities in terms of tone and mood with two other genres that the composer was known for, namely the nocturne and the berceuse. Chopin's Barcarolle displays typical attributes of the barcarolle such as a gentle rocking-boat rhythm evoking soft undulating waves and a 12/8 metre. Poetic and pianistic lyricism radiates throughout the musical narrative with delicate and ornamented melodic lines, often in thirds and sixths, and sublime harmonies. Although the form of the Barcarolle can be more simply considered ABA, music theorist David Kopp has described the piece as one that employs a "sprawling, idiosyncratic formal plan". One of the most beautiful moments takes place in the section titled, in Italian, 'dolce sfogato' which emphasises the feeling of sweetness. Chopin's Barcarolle has perhaps attained an unsurpassable place in the genre in the history of piano literature, with Walter Raymond Spalding, who taught in Harvard, declaring on this composition: "It is also most sincerely conceived, intensifying the suggestiveness of the descriptive title. Would that objective programme music were always so true to life and to the real nature of music!"
Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor, Op. 58
On Chopin's sonatas, Liszt once wrote:
His Concertos and Sonatas are beautiful indeed, but we may discern in them more effort than inspiration. His creative genius was imperious, fantastic and impulsive. His beauties were only manifested fully in entire freedom. We believe he offered violence to the character of his genius whenever he sought to subject it to rules, to classifications, to regulations not his own, and which he could not force into harmony with the exactions of his own mind. He was one of those original beings, whose graces are only fully displayed when they have cut themselves adrift from all bondage, and float on at their own wild will, swayed only by the ever undulating impulses of their own mobile natures.
Chopin composed three piano sonatas in his life time, and the last in B minor perhaps exemplified the creative genius Liszt had identified the most in comparison to his Piano Sonata No. 1 in C minor, Op. 4, written in 1828, and even Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor, 'Funeral March'. When this sonata first premiered in 1845, however, the responses from the audience in Paris were not entirely positive. The complexity of the work proved particularly challenging to the listeners, who were perhaps looking for more clarity in formal structure.
Written in 1844 during some of his happiest times with George Sand and dedicated to his pupil Countess Élise de Perthuis, Chopin's Sonata No. 3 consists of four movements. The first, marked Allegro maestoso, is composed in a sonata-allegro form and opens with a solemn, forceful descending theme in B minor. The exposition is repeated. The development is highly contrapuntal and fugal, with added chromaticism and harmonic intensity. In the recapitulation, the first theme is omitted, and the movement ends in B major with an impressive coda. The second movement is a Scherzo, set in the distant and dreamy E-flat major in ABA form. In the B section, namely the trio, the music is framed in B major, emitting a more serious tone that contrasts the scherzo sections.
The third movement is a Largo, written also in ABA form, marked by the entrance of double-dotted rhythm. It opens in a resolute and passionate fortissimo in B major and yet quiets down to piano rather quickly. Usually understood as a nocturne, it later moves to E major before coming back to B major. The movement consistently demonstrates an introspective and poetic character. The finale labelled Presto non tanto, now back in B minor, exists in the form of a rondo. Opening with a series of sonorous octaves, it radiates immense power and restlessness throughout. The coda once again showcases virtuosity, mesmerising the ears with brilliance and bravura, ending the whole sonata in a glorious B major.
Programme notes by Keri Hui
PhD in Musicology
The University of Hong Kong and Kings College London
