Bruce Liu

Pianist Bruce Liu instantly achieved widespread renown when he won the XVIII International Chopin Piano Competition in 2021. The win led to his signing with the Deutsche Grammophon label, which began releasing recordings of his performances during the competition. His résumé of performances includes appearances not only with Canadian groups but also with a number of world-class ensembles outside Canada. Liu’s growing recording catalog includes WAVES: Music by Satie (2024), on which he performs music by Satie on an upright piano as well as on a conventional concert grand. Bruce Xiaoyu Liu (刘晓禹) was born to Chinese parents in Paris, France, on May 8, 1997. His family moved to Montreal, Quebec, Canada, when he was six, and two years later, he took up the piano. By the time he was 11, he was entering competitions, and soon, he was winning them both in Canada and beyond, including the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal Standard Life Competition (2012), the Prix d’Europe (2015), and the Viseu International Piano Competition in Portugal (2019). Liu entered the piano class of Richard Raymond at the Montreal Conservatory of Music and then went on to the Université de Montréal. There, he studied with pianist Dong Thai Son, who in 1980 became the first Asian winner of the Chopin International Competition; he continued to study with Dong Thai Son in the early 2020s. Even before his Chopin Piano Competition win, Liu had performed with a variety of major orchestral ensembles, including the Cleveland Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as a number of groups in Canada, and he made recordings for broadcast with the ICI Radio-Canada network. He toured the U.S. with the China National Center for the Performing Arts Orchestra. The Chopin Piano Competition prize brought Liu what he termed a marathon of further appearances and a contract with the Deutsche Grammophon label, which issued his prize-winning performances in 2021. Further releases featured Liu’s work in other rounds of the competition. In 2023, Liu issued the album WAVES: Rameau, Ravel, Alkan, and in 2024, another album under the “WAVES” rubric, Music by Satie, appeared on Deutsche Grammophon. Both charismatic and disarmingly humble (he is fond of saying he is “not so good at piano”), Liu numbers among his hobbies auto racing. The same enthusiasm was pursued by Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, a pianist Liu admires and in some respects resembles as an artist. ~ James Manheim