Chopin études to audiences of 3000? Lortie knows how
Paganini started it. From the moment he took the stage in La Scala, virtuoso performers have been urged to play up to their “dark powers”, as though they were somehow in league with the Devil. Louis Lortie will cheerfully play along with this idea – but only up to a point. With Chopin in mind, he points out that the performer as circus animal is a relatively recent phenomenon, ‘because of what the music world has become’.
How, then, to play Chopin’s études to a packed concert hall – pieces that were intended primarily for home study? Restraint is hardly the first word that springs to mind when listening to Lortie’s recital of Chopin’s études. And in front of audiences that are sometimes 3,000 strong, Lortie cannot afford to be tentative. The point he’s making is rather different: that each étude has a built-in personality – an architecture that an egotistic performer can miss. ‘Chopin did not have the means that Liszt had to explode his personality all over a performance. The études, I think, were his response to that.’ So whatever the circumstances, whatever the temptations, Lortie factors in ‘a certain amount of introversion’.
Born in Montreal, Louis Lortie made his debut with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra at the age of thirteen and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra three years later. Soon after he performed an historic tour of the People’s Republic of China and Japan. He keeps a home in his native Quebec, but these days he’s based primarily in Berlin. Following dates in the USA and France, he struck up a particularly close relationship with Kurt Masur, with whom he will perform in the coming seasons in Rome, Dresden and Leipzig.
Lortie turned 50 this year, and though his active repertoire extends from the 18th to the 21st century, from all the Mozart piano concertos to the piano music of Thomas Adès, he is more and more drawn to Chopin, and to Liszt. ‘One of the things about turning 50 is that you realise that you have to devote time to the things that matter to you. There is a lot of virtuoso repertoire – say the Saint-Saëns piano concertos – that I used to enjoy working at, but now I prefer to focus on music that I find more deeply satisfying.’
Louis Lortie plays the complete Chopin études at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on Monday, 23 November 2009.
Following the concert, Plushmusic releases Louis Lortie’s Aldeburgh recital in HD video and audio, along with a video interview of Louis Lortie in conversation with Ivan Hewett of the Telegraph.
