Interview, Eric Lu on Schubert

Back in December, I was struck by recent Leeds Piano Competition winner Eric Lu's thoughtful and at times delicate performances of two Schubert sonatas - his approach revealed a side of the music that, while drawing on the composer's well-documented struggles with mental health, seemed to focus on the introverted and contemplative side of Schubert the man rather than indulging in melodrama and crude ideas of "madness" in music.

More recently, I was lucky enough to ask Eric himself about his relationship with these pieces and his approach to Schubert.

What inspired you to turn to Schubert for your latest album – and why these two sonatas in particular?

Schubert is a composer that has been quite an obsession of mine in recent times, perhaps the one that has consumed me the most. The more I dig into his music and experience his world, the more I feel how truly great he is. An endlessly deep, tragic, but pure soul. These two sonatas I felt worked together well among his output: the A minor, his first time diving into such darkness among his Piano Sonatas, and the A major, the unspeakably great Sonata, written alongside so many masterworks in the last year of his life.

The impression I had when listening to the performances was one of delicate restraint – it felt almost like an intimate Lieder soundworld at times, rather than a more extroverted soloistic approach. Is that a side of Schubert’s music that you’re trying to bring out?

I don’t think of restraint when playing Schubert’s music, but rather how I feel his temperament is, what the specific music requires, and how he speaks in it. Of course, his world is not one of extroversion at all, and the ‘soloistic’ element is not really part of his vocabulary.

The Allegretto D915 might be seen as just a filler piece to make up the time on the album, but it clearly means much more to you than that – how does this piece fit in with the two sonatas?

I think this Allegretto is one of his great standalone pieces, and in just a few pages of relatively simple material, shows the inner side of his world that we can see so closely in his masterpieces, such as the D. 959 Sonata, or Winterreise. For me, it fits in well because it’s a more immediate glimpse into him, as opposed to the Sonatas, which require the full narration, or journey to fully understand what the piece is about.

Eric Lu performs Schubert's Allegretto D915 live at the Chopin and his Music Festival in in Warsaw, August 2021.

Some pianists set great store by the specific instruments they perform on, either particular period models or just certain kinds of instrument in general. Is that something you place much emphasis on?

I place great importance on the quality of my instrument, and in this case, specifically brought a piano into the Teldex studio, alongside one of the world’s great technicians, Michel Brandjes. He is a total artist. With him, we can be so particular in working on the instrument together for the music I’m performing, we can even make specific adjustments for certain passages.

You’ve referred to this as your first Schubert album – does that imply that we should expect more in the near future?

Definitely, there will be more in the future :)