Louis Lortie brings Chopin and a Fazioli to the QEH
Monday’s recital by Louis Lortie at the Queen Elizabeth Hall promises to bring a bell-like clarity to even the most fiendish of Fryderyk Chopin’s 27 études.
Never mind, for the moment, the French-Canadian pianist’s global reputation; never mind his early induction to Chopin, or his previous recordings. (We’ll come on to all of that in subsequent posts) Let’s kick off this discussion, instead, with his not inconsiderable choice of piano.
Lortie’s by no means the first to bring a Fazioli to the South Bank (Angela Hewitt’s love of the upstart furniture-maker’s painstakingly handbuilt instruments was getting the more staid reviewers’ backs up in 2006). Still, the marriage of Lortie, Chopin and Fazioli promises to further entrench the reputation of the world’s most expensive piano (about $2,300 per key, since you were wondering – the bench is extra).
Louis Lortie’s enthusiasm has done the Venetian workshop sterling service in interview: he told one TV station “the action is so fluid, so even, it’s almost like a massage for the pianist”. Much more important, Lortie has put his money where his mouth is in both the recording studio and the concert hall. His recent recording of Chopin’s Etudes – a poignant return to the recording territory of his youth – sold 50,000 copies. A couple of months ago Plushmusic, in association with Chandos, was given the chance to take over the brand-new Britten Studio at Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh, to record and film Lortie performing Chopin’s ground-breaking studies. Monday’s recital of them at the QEH’s International Piano Series is the first concert in Lortie’s world tour. All three performances were or will be assayed on a Fazioli. A minor point, you might think – until you witness for yourself the alchemical marriage of Lortie and the Fazioli mechanism.
“It’s a peculiar piano,” piano technician Oliver Esmonde-White, told the Montreal Gazette. “It’s like a really good sound system, where you hear the warts and all. The touch makes a huge difference. It shows up all kinds of things.” Cheap comparisons between Fazioli and Ferrari litter the piano maker’s press cuttings file. Cheap as it is, though, the comparison does make a sort of sense: Faziolis are as unforgiving as any high-performance machine. How else can they reveal a great player’s subtlest intentions? With September’s Snape Maltings recordings behind us, we’re confident that Monday’s concert will be a revelation.
