DG announces live album from the 19th International Chopin Piano Competition by this year’s winner Eric Lu
DG announces upcoming live album by Eric Lu, the winner of this year’s 19th International Chopin Piano Competition, as part of a renewed collaboration with the Fryderyk Chopin Institute
The album is set to be released on 21 November
First single out on Friday, 24 October
Berlin, 21 October 2025. Deutsche Grammophon is to release an album featuring highlights of the performances given by Eric Lu, winner of the 19th International Chopin Piano Competition. The American pianist was awarded first prize by the jury in Warsaw last night, following the final round of the Competition. His recordings were captured live during the various stages of the world’s most prestigious competition for classical musicians, which opened with an inaugural concert at the Concert Hall of the National Philharmonic on 2 October 2025. The awards gala and prize-winners’ concerts are being held at the hall between 21 and 23 October, with the pianists joined by the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Andrzej Boreyko in the concerto performances. Eric Lu will now undertake a tour of some of the world’s most prestigious venues.
“I’m so grateful for this honour,” says Eric Lu, “grateful to all the Chopin lovers around the world who watched online, to the audience here in Warsaw, and to the jury for bestowing this honour on me. This is a dream come true.”
The winner’s album will be released digitally and on CD on 21 November 2025 on Deutsche Grammophon, with a first track – Chopin’s Waltz in C sharp minor, Op. 64 No. 2 – issued for streaming and download on Friday 24 October. The album will be the third release of its kind, marking a continuing partnership between DG and the Fryderyk Chopin Institute – which has organised and hosted the Chopin Competition since 2010 – and reflecting their joint commitment to promoting exceptional interpretations of Chopin’s music.
“It’s a great pleasure to release an album of live recordings by Eric Lu, a very worthy winner of this year’s International Chopin Piano Competition,” says Dr Clemens Trautmann, President Deutsche Grammophon and New Business Strategy Global Classics at Universal Music Group. “His performances over the last few weeks have won him millions of new fans around the world. We look forward to sharing these insightful and powerful readings of Chopin with an even wider global audience, thus transforming the spontaneous excitement of the competition into a lasting pianistic legacy, as we did with previous first-prize winners, ranging from Maurizio Pollini in the 1960s to Bruce Liu in 2021. We’re equally delighted to have renewed our longstanding relationship with the Fryderyk Chopin Institute, whose artistic ideals are so closely aligned with those of DG.”
“It is hard to overestimate the importance of our long-standing cooperation, which, against the backdrop of such an extraordinary event as the Chopin Competition, helps spread the phenomenon of the Polish composer around the world,” says Stanisław Leszczyński, Artistic Director of the Chopin Institute.
The collaboration between the Institute and DG began in 2015 when the Yellow Label arranged the immediate release of an album by the winner of the 17th edition of the competition. Seong-Jin Cho’s debut recording, drawn from the recital rounds and finals, topped the pop charts in his native South Korea and led to his signing with DG in January 2016. Victory in the delayed 18th edition of 2021 went to the then 24-year-old Canadian pianist Bruce Liu. Like Cho before him, Liu has since gone on to establish a hugely successful career in both concert hall and recording studio, and is also signed exclusively to DG.
The International Chopin Piano Competition was first held in 1927. Since 1955, it has taken place every five years, with the exception of the 18th edition, postponed by a year because of the Covid−19 pandemic. A founding member of the World Federation of International Music Festivals, the Chopin Competition has set the benchmark standards by which all other classical music competitions are measured.
Its reputation also rests on the international stature and quality of its jury members. Over the years, these have included such leading figures as Wilhelm Backhaus, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Nadia Boulanger, Witold Lutosławski, Krzysztof Penderecki, Artur Rubinstein and Karol Szymanowski. The chairman of the jury for the 19th edition is the American pianist Garrick Ohlsson.
As in previous years, the DG signature release of the First Prize winner will be followed in the coming months by additional albums documenting the competition and all the prize winners, to be issued by the Chopin Institute.
ABOUT ERIC LU
Born on 15 December 1997. He is a graduate of the Curtis Institute. He won first prize in the Leeds International Piano Competition in 2018. He has performed with the Boston, London, Chicago, Tokyo, Finnish Radio and Shanghai symphony orchestras, as well as the Los Angeles, Oslo, Luxembourg, Stockholm and Warsaw philharmonic orchestras, among others. He has given recitals at the Kölner Philharmonie, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Elbphilharmonie, Concertgebouw, Wigmore Hall, Davies Symphony Hall, Warsaw Philharmonic, Seoul Arts Centre and Bozar Brussels. He has appeared at festivals in La Roque d’Anthéron, Warsaw, Aspen, Los Angeles, Duszniki and Valldemossa. He has released two albums on the Warner Classics label, recording works by Schubert, Chopin, Schumann and Brahms.
October 2025
