Please note this event has now taken place.

Thursday 20 June 2019

The Old Swan Hotel | Harrogate | 7.30pm

Tickets: £21 & £19

£21 tickets are situated in the Ballroom and front rows of the Garden Room.

£19 seats are situated towards the rear of the Garden Room.

Please note that all transactions are subject to a £1.75 booking fee.

Please call our box office to book wheelchair seats.

BOX OFFICE: 01423 562 303.

Eric Lu won First Prize at The Leeds International Piano Competition in September 2018, performing Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto in the final with The Hallé and Edward Gardner. On his semi-final round, The Independent praised a reading of Chopin’s Second Sonata which “took one’s breath away with its measured grandeur.”

Born in Massachusetts in 1997, Eric has already worked with the Minnesota Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, and Qatar Philharmonic; and performed at Carnegie Hall, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Taipei National Concert Hall, Tokyo Metropolitan Hall, Auditorio Nacional Madrid and Seoul Arts Centre.

Eric Lu first came to international attention as a prize winner at the 2015 Chopin International Competition in Warsaw aged just 17, and on winning the 2017 International German Piano Award and the US National Chopin Competition.

He is currently studying at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where his teachers include Jonathan Biss, Robert McDonald and Dang Thai Son.

Composed in 1854, Ghost Variations was the last piano work composed by Schumann. A rare treat for the ears, this set of theme and variations in E-flat major are infrequently played or recorded today. Brahms’ Three Intermezzo were composed in 1892. The first intermezzo in E-flat major is prefaced in the score by two lines from an old Scottish ballad, Lady Anne Bothwell’s Lament. The lines are “Balow, my babe, lie still and sleep! It grieves me sore to see thee weep.” Although composed in 1823, Schubert’s Piano Sonata in A minor was not published until 1839, eleven years after his death. This sonata, Schubert’s last to be in three movements, is seen by many to herald a new era in Schubert’s output for the piano. Handel was most famous for his operas, oratorios and concerti grossi. Eric Lu brings the Baroque period to life performing Chaconne HMV 435 from the most recent publication Händel-Werke-Verzeichnis. Chopin’s Second Sonata promises to bring this concert to a triumphant close. Comprising four movements, this sonata gained instant popularity with the public when published. Having become an archetypal evocation of death it has been performed at funerals all over the world, including Chopin’s own funeral.

“Artistry of that kind is rare in pianists of any age; to find it in a 20-year old is simply astounding.” – The Daily Telegraph.