Louis Lortie

French Canadian pianist Louis Lortie has extended his interpretative voice across a broad range of repertoire rather than choosing to specialize in one particular style.  The London Times has identified the artist’s “combination of total spontaneity and meditated ripeness that only great pianists have”.

He is in demand internationally. In 2017-2018, he is Artist in Residence of the Shanghai Symphony and performs four different programs with them throughout the season. He performs with the OSESP Sao Paulo and the complete Liszt “Annees de Pelerinage” in recital for them. In Australia, Mr. Lortie performs with WASO/Perth and with the Adelaide Symphony. He performs Liszt “Annees” for the Chicago Symphony and for the annual Liszt Festival in Raiding, Hungary. There will be two Lortie recitals at London’s Wigmore Hall and an extensive recital tour in Italy. He performs and records with Sir Andrew Davis and the BBC Symphony, was selected by Jaap Van Zweden to play Mozart K466 for one of Mr. Van Zweden’s final Dallas Symphony concerts as Music Director. He returns to the National Symphony Taipei, the Philadelphia Orchestra with Nezet-Seguin, the Toronto Symphony, Budapest Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony and the New York Philharmonic. His play/conduct engagements are with great orchestras world-wide.

Louis Lortie’s long-awaited LacMus International Festival (https://vimeo.com/lacmusfestival) on Lake Como, Italy, makes its debut July 9-16, 2017.

He has made more than 45 recordings for the Chandos label, covering repertoire from Mozart to Stravinsky, including a set of the complete Beethoven sonatas and the complete Liszt “Annees de Pelerinage”, which was named one of the ten best recordings of 2012 by the New Yorker Magazine.  His recording of the Lutosławski Piano Concerto with Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony received high praise, as did a recent Chopin recording (he is recording all of Chopin’s solo piano music for Chandos), which was named one of the best recordings of the year by the New York Times. Recently released recordings are Chopin Waltzes (“This is Chopin playing of sublime genius”- Fanfare Magazine), Saint Saens’ Africa, Wedding Cake, and Carnival of the Animals with Neeme Jarvi and the Bergen Philharmonic, and Rachmaninov’s complete works for two pianos with Helene Mercier. Future recordings are Poulenc works for piano and orchestra with the BBC Philharmonic, Faure piano works, and Scriabin piano works. For the Onyx label, he has recorded two acclaimed CDs with violinist Augustin Dumay.

Mr. Lortie is the Master in Residence at The Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel of Brussels. He studied in Montreal with Yvonne Hubert (a pupil of the legendary Alfred Cortot), in Vienna with Beethoven specialist Dieter Weber, and subsequently with Schnabel disciple Leon Fleisher. In 1984, he won First Prize in the Busoni Competition and was also prizewinner at the Leeds Competition.  Mr. Lortie is a citizen of Canada and has homes in Montreal, Berlin and Italy.