Eric Lu won First Prize at The Leeds International Piano Competition in 2018, the first American to win the prestigious prize since Murray Perahia. He made his BBC Proms debut the following summer, and is currently a member of the BBC New Generation Artist scheme. Eric is a recipient of the 2021 Avery Fisher Career Grant, and is an exclusive Warner Classics recording artist.
Forthcoming concerto highlights include debuts with the London Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Oslo Philharmonic, Finnish Radio Symphony, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, and Kansas City Symphony. He will also give recitals at the Rockport Music Festival, Cal Performances Berkeley, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Cologne Philharmonie, Wigmore Hall, Bath Mozartfest and Chopin and his Europe Festival.
Eric has recently performed with the Seattle Symphony, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, The Hallé, Shanghai Symphony, Warsaw Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic, Swedish Chamber Orchestra, and Singapore Symphony amongst others. He has worked with conductors Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, Vasily Petrenko, Edward Gardner, Sir Mark Elder, Thomas Dausgaard, Martin Frӧst, Alexander Bloch, and Long Yu.
He has appeared in recital at Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, BOZAR Brussels, Wigmore Hall, Philharmonie Luxembourg, St. Petersburg Philharmonia, 92nd St Y, Fondation Louis Vuitton Paris, Seoul Arts Centre, Grand Theatre Shanghai, and Sala São Paulo. Eric went on tour with the Orchestre National de Lille in 2020, and in the prior year, he replaced Martha Argerich in Singapore, and Nelson Freire in São Paulo.
In 2020, Warner Classics released Eric’s first studio album, featuring the Chopin 24 Preludes, and Schumann’s Geistervariationen. It was met with critical acclaim, including one of BBC Music Magazine’s ‘Instrumental Records of the Year’. In 2018, Eric’s winning performances of Beethoven and Chopin from The Leeds with The Hallé and Edward Gardner was released by Warner. He has also released a Mozart, Schubert and Brahms recital on Genuin Classics.
Born in Massachusetts in 1997, Eric Lu first came to international attention as a prize-winner at the 2015 Chopin International Competition in Warsaw aged just 17. He previously won the 2015 US National Chopin Competition, and was awarded the International German Piano Award in 2017. He is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, studying with Robert McDonald and Jonathan Biss. He is also a pupil of Dang Thai Son. He is now based in Berlin and Boston.