An Inexhaustible Heart. A Tribute to the Chopin Piano Competition and its 2025 Winner Eric Lu.

Warsaw, October 2025. In the golden hall of the National Philharmonic, a hush deep enough to hear one’s heartbeat precedes the music. Eric Lu lowers his hands to the keys and begins his final round with Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantaisie in A-flat major, Op. 61. Later, in the Piano Concerto in F minor, Op. 21, he offered the evening’s defining performance—lyrical yet unsentimental, a dialogue of intimacy and power that made the familiar newly alive. When the final chord resounded, the hall erupted. It was not in frenzy. It was gratitude. The audience had witnessed something both fragile and immense.

The jury confirmed what the room already knew: the American pianist had won the XIX International Chopin Piano Competition. One of the world’s most demanding test of lyric intelligence and technical grace.

Days earlier, in the third round, he had already staked his claim. Playing a Fazioli—its bell-like treble, long sustain, and responsive action suiting his aesthetic—Lu shaped a luminous Barcarolle in F-sharp major, Op. 60, let the B-flat major Polonaise, Op. 71 No. 2 stride without swagger, traced the Mazurkas, Op. 56 with aristocratic restraint, and built the Sonata in B minor, Op. 58 with architectural clarity. What stood out was the cantabile: a sung line drawn with spare pedaling, inner voices cleanly voiced, rubato kept on a short leash so the phrase could breathe on its own.

That this young musician from Massachusetts—born to Chinese parents, trained in Philadelphia and London—should triumph in Warsaw is a small wonder of globalization’s better side.

The Chopin Competition, held every five years, is a ritual: pianists from around the world gather in the composer’s homeland to test themselves against his impossible delicacy. Out of 640 applicants, 84 were admitted; eleven reached the finals. Under the watch of former laureate Garrick Ohlsson, they played nocturnes, études, mazurkas, and concertos until hearts steadied. The prize is more than an award - it is an initiation into a lineage.

To watch these competitors is to glimpse a quieter kind of heroism. For years they have lived monastically—hours of study, phrases repeated until they dissolve into instinct. What they pursue is communion: with Chopin, with sound, with something beyond themselves. In an age when fame can be bought in a click, such devotion feels radical—a life spent seeking intimacy, not visibility.

What they pursue is communion: with Chopin, with sound, with something beyond themselves. In an age when fame can be bought in a click, such devotion feels radical—a life spent seeking intimacy, not visibility.

Eric Lu embodies that spirit. Shy, reserved, and introspective, he plays as if overheard rather than observed.

Chopin himself was born in 1810 in Żelazowa Wola—a modest village an hour from Warsaw, ringed with birches and mist. That such a place produced one of civilization’s most refined voices is itself a marvel. From those rural rhythms he drew the mazurka; from Polish exile he drew the nocturne’s solitude. His music married the national and the eternal: local dance turned metaphysical. “He made the piano sing,” wrote Schumann; but more than that, he made it think. André Gide (Notes sur Chopin, 1931) called him “the greatest of us all, for through him, the piano became an instrument of thought.” What Chopin gave the world was not virtuosity but vocabulary: the means to articulate yearning without sentimentality, grief without despair.

What Chopin gave the world was not virtuosity but vocabulary: the means to articulate yearning without sentimentality, grief without despair.

Each Chopin Competition renews that gift. Its laureates—Pollini (1960), Argerich (1965), Zimerman (1975), Ohlsson (1970), Cho (2015), Liu (2021), Lu (2025)—form a living lineage across generations and continents. Each carries the same flame, but the music burns differently in every hand: Pollini’s crystalline modernism, Argerich’s volcanic spontaneity, Zimerman’s architectural poise, Ohlsson’s noble weight, Cho’s luminous restraint, Liu’s mercurial clarity, Lu’s inward grace.

The stories that surround these pianists have become part of the competition’s mythology. Martha Argerich’s 1965 victory made her a legend overnight. Polish critic Jan Weber described her playing as “a miracle of fire and freedom,” and The Times of London hailed her Études as “volcanic yet perfectly controlled.” Listeners said her touch seemed to ignite in mid-air. A decade later, Krystian Zimerman—only eighteen—won the 1975 competition with what one juror called “the discipline of an engineer and the poetry of a dreamer.” Since then he has guarded the ideal of sonic purity, famously traveling with his own Steinway from Katowice and regulating it by hand before every recital. When he returned to the Warsaw jury in 2010, he remarked that he came “to listen for honesty, not perfection.”

Each of these artists, in their own way, touched the same inheritance—the idea that Chopin’s music carries what Poles once called - żal - a sorrow that smiles through tears - the soul of the nation in sound. From Żelazowa Wola, where that soul first found a keyboard, to the Philharmonic in Warsaw, where it is renewed every five years, the competition has become Poland’s most enduring act of remembrance.

◳ The Soul of Poland in Music

Chopin called it żal—a sorrow that smiles through tears. From mazurkas to Paderewski’s anthems, Polish music became a form of sovereignty: beauty transfigured by suffering, melody as the nation’s survival.

Concordia Discors MagazineCDM Editors

Around Warsaw during competition week, cafés stay open past midnight; students argue rubato over espresso, their notebooks smudged with tempo markings. Elderly Poles recall anecdotes from the ’65 as if it happened yesterday. The air hums with piano—Nocturnes drifting from practice rooms, Mazurkas from open windows. The city itself seems to breathe in crescendo.

To be there is to feel that civilization still has sanctuaries: places where excellence and humility still meet, where attention itself becomes a form of devotion.

To be there is to feel that civilization still has sanctuaries: places where excellence and humility still meet, where attention itself becomes a form of devotion. “For those two weeks,” a Warsaw critic once wrote, “the city becomes the capital of tenderness.”

Tenderness: that is the word. It is what sets Chopin apart from the bombast that so often passes for modern art. His strength is quiet, his rebellion inward.

Tenderness: that is the word. It is what sets Chopin apart from the bombast that so often passes for modern art. His strength is quiet, his rebellion inward. In an age that mistakes loudness for depth, he teaches the ethics of listening; in a culture of instant reaction, he restores the patience of understanding. He reminds us that to be human is to attend—to stay, to hesitate, to hear. To master him demands more than technique, which a machine may soon imitate; it requires character—the courage to dwell in ambiguity without breaking it.

That is why watching these young pianists feels so moving. They devote their twenties to deciphering a composer who whispers. In doing so they affirm a faith older than entertainment: that meaning is worth labor, that beauty demands discipline. In the applause for Eric Lu we hear gratitude not only for a pianist but for an entire way of being—the patient, attentive, self-forgetting life that art requires.

That is why watching these young pianists feels so moving. They devote their twenties to deciphering a composer who whispers. In doing so they affirm a faith older than entertainment: that meaning is worth labor, that beauty demands discipline. In the applause for Eric Lu we hear gratitude not only for a pianist but for an entire way of being—the patient, attentive, self-forgetting life that art requires.

From the birch trees of Żelazowa Wola to the livestreams reaching millions, Chopin’s journey traces the arc of modern civilization, crystallizing into global emotion. Nearly two centuries after his death, his unique idiom of tenderness still shapes how the world imagine beauty. What Chopin gave us is not normal; it is miraculous. And those who gather every five years to honor him remind us that miracles, too, need caretakers.

What Chopin gave us is not normal; it is miraculous. And those who gather every five years to honor him remind us that miracles, too, need caretakers.

Let us salute the laureates, the jurors, the teachers—the sleepless students polishing a phrase somewhere tonight. They form a quiet order of tenderness in a coarse age. Let us remember that the applause that followed was not noise but recognition—the world is remembering how to listen.

And let us thank Eric Lu, whose playing in Warsaw reminded the world that Chopin’s music, like the human heart, is inexhaustible. ◳

And let us thank Eric Lu, whose playing in Warsaw reminded the world that Chopin’s music, like the human heart, is inexhaustible.