This fall, Austrian pianist Lukas Sternath marks two debuts: His first recital album, out Oct. 23 on the newly established label NO SILENCE, and his first U.S./Canada tour, which begins Dec. 6 at Chicago Symphony Center.
The debut album, a two-disc set, features works by Franz Liszt and Franz Schubert, which Sternath will perform on his fall recital tour. NO SILENCE was established by fellow piano virtuoso Igor Levitt, in collaboration with Sony Classical.
Sternath came to global attention when he won the 2022 ARD International Music Competition, collecting seven prizes. Yet almost as remarkable as his success was his decision to decline the accompanying offer of a debut recording. Then just 22, he felt the time was not yet right. Instead, he decided to wait until the project felt truly his own. Sternath said that Levit, his teacher at the University of Music, Drama & Media in Hanover, Germany, gave him complete artistic freedom in shaping the project.
The set’s first disc collects five Schubert songs in Liszt’s celebrated piano transcriptions, alongside Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy. The second disc is devoted entirely to Liszt, with Deuxième Année: Italie from Années de Pèlerinage, culminating in the vast and visionary Fantasia quasi Sonata: Après une lecture du Dante.
Sternath, now 25, calls the result a deeply personal album. “These songs explore states of mind, emotional landscapes and ways of seeing the world,” he said and added, “not least that of the performer himself.”
Running through the program is the recurring figure of the wanderer, a theme with which Sternath feels a deep affinity. "’The feeling of being ’a stranger wherever I go’ is one I know well," Sternath said. “You are always searching, always moving forward, never quite arriving. Yet when I sit at the piano, I feel at home.” Throughout Liszt’s Années de Pèlerinage, Sternath remains closely connected to the spirit of song and the expressive power of language.
Drawing inspiration from Petrarch’s poetry, he seeks to translate its meaning directly into sound. Rather than treating Liszt’s virtuosity as an end in itself, he understands it as the outward expression of an inner necessity, an emotional and spiritual eruption. Sternath creates an interpretation shaped by curiosity and reflection: a continual process of questioning, discovering, discarding and ultimately, letting go.
The importance of breathing in music is a lesson that Sternath learned as a child during his fours years in the Vienna Boys Choir. Even today, he sings through songs as he practices. “’It helps me to understand their vocal flow,” Sternath said. “And to bring that sense of breath and phrasing into my playing.”
After Chicago, Sternath’s tour continues on to La Jolla Music Society, Cal Performances in Berkeley, Vancouver’s Recital Society, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall and Vivo Performing Arts Boston.
