Review: Bruce Liu Explores the Night on Lunaris

In winning the XVIII International Chopin Piano Competition in 2021, Canadian pianist Bruce Liu (b. 1997) scored the highest marks in the first three stages and was the only competitor the jury unanimously selected to progress from each round. From that outstanding beginning (he was also the audience favourite), he started his international career.

Bruce Liu (photo by Sonja Mueller)

In Lunaris, his fifth album for Deutsche Grammophon, he invented a word that, for him, evokes a state of being in the quiet hours when one’s internal world permits a space for imagination. As a competitive pianist, the night hours were the only time that the noise of the world fell away and ‘reflection and creative energy’ met.

The core of the recording lies in the triumvirate of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, Scriabin’s Fourth Sonata, and Chopin’s Nocturne in D flat major, Op. 27/2. Classical / Romantic / and Modern music meet in a night-time confluence. They’re joined by Debussy (Rêverie), Mompou’s two works based on Au clair de la lune, and John Cage’s Dream, among other works.

Liu’s playing of the Beethoven is quiet and precise, in a way that we rarely seem to hear the composer.

Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 14 in C sharp minor “Moonlight” op. 27/ 2 – II. Allegretto

On the other end of the chronological line, Cage’s Dream, written in 1948 for choreography by Merce Cunningham. It wanders, just as our minds do in a dream-like state. Considered one of Cage’s most accessible works, at the same time, it could be considered one of his most radical, following the wisps of the mind rather than any known pattern.

John Cage: Dream

Between those two extremes, where we also have a bit of Bach and Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata, Liu finds a place for expressing the varieties of night. It’s a very pleasurable album that makes you stop and reflect rather than marching forward with righteousness, as seems to be the pattern for the world today. Even the opening of the Waldstein sonata (Allegro con brio) seems to be more pensive in the context of the rest of the album than might be first thought. As a listener, you’re caught in a pensive mood that the repetition in the Beethoven only reinforces.

Note: The digital release includes two additional tracks not on the CD release, Schoenberg’s Little Piano Piece, and Reynaldo Hahn’s Hivernale from Le rossingol éperdu.