Eric Lu in Zagreb on October 12 - the Warsaw Chopin Competition winner plays Brahms, Schumann and Prokofiev

Eric Lu, the pianist who took first prize at the 19th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in October 2025, performs on October 12 at 20:00 in the Croatian State Archives in Zagreb. The concert is part of the 11th season of the piano series "Svetislav Stančić's Pleyel". A year after the most important win in the classical piano world, Lu is playing an archive hall, not an arena - and that is exactly the point of series like this.

Lu is 27 and a graduate of the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. He didn't come to Warsaw out of nowhere: he finished fourth there back in 2015, aged 17, and in 2018 he won the Leeds competition. Last year, in front of a 17-member jury chaired by Garrick Ohlsson, he played the Polonaise-Fantaisie in A-flat major and Chopin's Second Concerto with the Warsaw Philharmonic in the final. According to the Washington Post, he is the first American to take the top prize since 1970. The award was 60,000 euros and a gold medal, and the competition drew a record 640 applications.

The Zagreb programme isn't just Chopin. The evening opens with Brahms's Theme and Variations in D minor, followed by two Rachmaninoff preludes, then the Nocturne in C minor and the same Polonaise-Fantaisie that won him Warsaw. After the interval come Schumann's Arabeske and the complete "Kinderszenen", and to close, Prokofiev's Seventh Sonata, one of his three "War Sonatas".

Tickets cost 45 euros (about 2,770 denars), with pensioners, students, pupils and groups paying 35 euros. They're on sale at entrio.hr and at the Archives box office an hour before the start. The organiser is the arts organisation Kristoforium, led by artistic director Danijel Gašparović. Skopje to Zagreb is no short trip, but a Chopin Competition winner in an archive hall is not something you see every season.