Three first prizes at international piano competitions in the space of a year laid the foundations for the 35-year-old Romanian-born Herbert Schuch’s rise to the pinnacle of global pianism. One of the competitions was the Vienna International Beethoven Competition, dedicated to a composer whom the artist includes in his sophisticated programmes time and again. In Bonn he is combining two late piano works by Beethoven with a highly virtuoso piece by the American composer Frederic Rzewski, along with eleven works by Ligeti, which were influenced by Bartók and Hungarian folk themes.
