Bruce Liu, the unexpected star of the 2026 Rudolf Firkušný Piano Festival. Czech debut on 5 November at the Rudolfinum

Due to sudden Due to a indisposition, Austrian pianist Lukas Sternath will be unable to perform at the Rudolfinum on Thursday, 5 November. Instead, Bruce Liu, the Canadian-Chinese pianist, winner of the 2021 International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw and an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist, will make his Czech debut. All tickets purchased remain valid. If you have any questions, please contact us by email at info@enigoo.cz or by telephone on +420 461 049 232.

Bruce Liu

“All these cultures surrounding me have a great impact on me. Chinese would be the traditional side. I feel like the history of Chinese culture, Confucianism and Taoism, is in my blood. I grew up in Canada, so I’m also heavily influenced by the openness and dynamism of North America. I have ties with Europe through my work, and from European culture, I like to take historical refinement,” says Bruce Liu, the 29-year-old Paris-born Canadian-Chinese pianist who burst onto the international music scene following his victory at the 18th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 2021. A year later, he signed an exclusive recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon, which has so far resulted in three albums: Lunaris, released in summer 2026, The Seasons (2024), and the double album Waves, which won the Opus Klassik Award for studio recording debut of the year in 2024.

In May 2026, the British magazine Pianist included him among the “10 legendary pianists with the most beautiful cantabile tone”. This season, Bruce Liu will perform with, among others, the New York Philharmonic under Ryan Bancroft and the London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Antonio Pappano, as well as at London’s Wigmore Hall. He has already made his debut with the Boston, Chicago and Vienna Symphony Orchestras, the Staatskapelle Dresden, and at prestigious venues such as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Berlin Philharmonie. In Prague, he will perform a programme largely mirroring his recital at New York’s Carnegie Hall in February this year, which earned him enthusiastic reviews. “When it came to downright sheer virtuosity, Mr. Liu was…well, astounding is a terrible adjective. Yet when it came to fingers and hands, the young man seemed to be indefatigable miraculous. Mr. Liu made the impossible sound…well, not insouciant. But with a crystalline perfection I have heard rarely,” wrote Harry Rolnick on concertonet.com.

Tickets on sale here.