Bruce Liu has announced ‘Lunaris’, a new studio album arriving August 7, 2026 via Deutsche Grammophon on CD, vinyl, and digitally. The Chinese-Canadian pianist, who won the International Chopin Piano Competition in 2021 at age 24, returns with his most conceptually ambitious recording yet, a richly varied collection of works unified by the symbolic world of night, moonlight, and inner reflection.
The album traces a narrative arc from Chopin’s Nocturne, Op. 27 No. 2 through to John Cage’s Dream, moving through works by Beethoven, Debussy, Scriabin, J.S. Bach, Mompou, Ligeti, and Danish singer-songwriter Agnes Obel along the way. Core repertoire includes Beethoven’s “Moonlight” and “Waldstein” Sonatas, Scriabin’s Fourth Sonata, and Debussy’s Rêverie, each chosen for how it fits within Liu’s carefully designed nocturnal trajectory.
“For me, Lunaris is about a state of being,” says Liu. “It is a nocturnal atmosphere and a space for introspection and quiet radiance. The night is the moment when reflection and creative energy meet.” The concept emerged from Liu’s own experience of working late into the night while on tour, often the only hours when true silence and concentration become possible.
The visual world behind the album runs equally deep. Liu drew inspiration from Baudelaire and Verlaine, the nocturnal landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich, the interiors of Vilhelm Hammershøi, and DalÃ’s The Persistence of Memory. Magritte’s The Empire of Light proved the defining image. “The coexistence of night and day, and the space where light can exist within the night, became a very strong poetic key to the concept,” he explains.
The album’s sequencing reflects careful intention. Opening with Chopin’s Op. 27 No. 2, which shares a gravitational center with the “Moonlight” Sonata through enharmonic equivalence, the program moves steadily from intimate human expression toward something Liu describes as “luminous, from earth to inner cosmos.” Cage’s Dream closes the album not as an ending but as an opening, leaving the journey unresolved and infinite.
Vinyl and digital editions include 2 additional tracks: “Hivernale” from Hahn’s Le rossignol éperdu and the first of Schoenberg’s 6 kleine Klavierstücke. The first digital single, Rêverie, is available now, with the final movement of the “Moonlight” Sonata following June 26, and Mompou’s Glossa sobre “Au clair de la lune” arriving July 17.