Bruce Liu, the winner of the last Chopin Competition in Warsaw, will return to Wrocław! Over the last years, Liu has released a well-received album and given concerts on several continents, joining the group of the most famous pianists in the world. During his solo recital, he will present interpretations of two works by Frederic Chopin, with which he won the hearts of the competition jurors and the audience in 2021 - Scherzo in E major op. 54 and Variations in B flat major op. 2. The repertoire of his Wrocław performance will also include by works by Haydn, Liszt and Ravel.

Bruce Liu will open his concert with Joseph Haydn’s Sonata in B minor, written by the composer in the mid-1770s. It is a work full of contrasts and virtuosic passages, reflecting the mood of the period of Sturm und Drang. The pianist will then move on to the Chopin part of the programme. The improvisational Scherzo in E major op. 54 was composed by Chopin in the years 1842–1843, when he was staying with his friends at George Sand’s estate in Nohant. Composed fifteen years earlier, the Variations in B flat major op. 2 on the theme of Là ci darem la mano from Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni is a masterpiece by the young composer, only seventeen years old at that time. It was Chopin’s first work for piano and orchestra (Liu will present the version for solo piano). After listening to this piece that Robert Schumann wrote the famous words in his review: “Hats off, gentlemen, here's a genius!”

Just like Chopin in Nohant, Maurice Ravel certainly did not complain about loneliness moving around in the artistic spheres of Paris. Around 1902, the French composer joined a group of musicians and writers associated with the avant-garde known as “Les Apaches”. To convey the characters of the members of this informal body in music, in 1904 and 1905 Ravel composed the five-movement suite Miroirs. At the end of the recital, Liu will return once again... to Don Giovanni, this time in Ferenc Liszt’s fantasy Réminiscences de Don Juan, in which the Hungarian composer, like Chopin, develops themes from Mozart’s brilliant opera. The scale of the work’s difficulty is evidenced by the fact that Alexander Scriabin once suffered a hand injury while practicing it.