A record released on November 3rd 2023 with which a 26-year-old pianist makes his Deutsche Grammophon-exclusive debut: the record Waves by Bruce Liu, the pianist who in 2021 won first place at one of the world's most difficult piano competitions, the Chopin Competition in Warsaw. This competition is held every 4 years - the next edition will take place in 2025. Other famous pianists who have won first place in this competition are Martha Argerich, Krystian Zimerman, Maurizio Pollini, Yundi, Rafal Blechacz, Seong Jin Cho.

Deutsche Grammophon and the Chopin Competition have a long-standing partnership - the winner receives a disc of performances from the competition. Bruce Liu, who on the 19^th of November 2021 saw his name on a newly released Deutsche Grammophon record, also benefited from this partnership.

Now, however, here he is with a self-penned record, his first as a Deutsche Grammophon exclusive artist, recorded in November 2022 in Berlin. Waves - 200 years of French music for keyboard instrument: from Rameau to Alkan and Maurice Ravel.

Bruce Liu was born in France to Chinese parents and settled in Canada - he is now a Canadian citizen. "What we all have in common is our differences" is the credo of this pianist who has stunned at the Chopin Competition, his launch pad into the world's top performers. Indeed, blending the best of the cultural traditions of France, North America and China, Bruce Liu is a particularly talented artist with a special poetics. He is currently a guest of the world's great orchestras and a constant presence at the most famous festivals dedicated to piano music in particular.

Beyond a brilliant, "elf-like" technique, as Diapason magazine remarked, Bruce Liu has a special understanding of music, with a great deal of poetry, an extraordinary touch and a very wide range of nuances. These qualities are best highlighted by Maurice Ravel's Suite of Mirrors, featured on the record Waves.

200 Years of French Music: a challenging journey for the 26-year-old, which includes not only works of Rameau and Ravel, but also works by a composer too unknown in our days: Charles Valentin Alkan, a romantic creator who lived between 1813 and 1888, a contemporary, therefore, of Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner, born in the same year.

Charles Alkan was a wonder child who became a student at the Paris Conservatory at the age of just 5 years and 7 months. In the Paris of the 1830s and 1840s, he was one of the three great pianists of the day - the other two being Chopin and Liszt.In 1848, when he was not appointed head of the piano department at the Paris Conservatoire, although he wanted the position badly and his opponent was far inferior, he made the decision to retire from public life. He reversed this decision in 1873, but could no longer lead a rich concert life. Moreover, he hated travelling, which contributed greatly to his lack of notoriety and popularity at the time - in Germany, for example, he was virtually unknown. Today, he is spoken of as the foremost representative of 19th-century French pianism; most of his works are dedicated to the piano - solo or in ensembles, and they demand, like the works of Chopin and Liszt, an extraordinary virtuosity of the performer, as well as an individual romantic poetry.

Bruce Liu has chosen two works of Charles Valentin Alkan for his Waves album: Barcarolle in G minor and Study op. 39 no. 12.