Louis Lortie, piano

For over three decades, French-Canadian pianist Louis Lortie has performed world-wide, building a reputation as one of the world’s most versatile pianists. He extends his interpretative voice across a broad spectrum of repertoire, and his performances and award-winning recordings attest to his remarkable musical range.

In recital and chamber music, Louis Lortie appears in the world’s most prestigious concert halls and festivals, including London’s Wigmore Hall, the Philharmonie de Paris, Carnegie Hall, Chicago Symphony Hall, the Beethovenfest Bonn and Liszt Festival Raiding. Louis Lortie is co-founder and Artistic Director of the LacMus International Festival on Lake Como and a Master in Residence at The Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel of Brussels. Together with fellow pianist Hélène Mercier, as the Lortie-Mercier duo, he has also shed new light on the repertoire for four hands and two pianos both in the concert hall and on several best-selling recordings.

A prolific recording artist, Lortie’s thirty-year relationship with Chandos Records has produced a catalogue of over 45 recordings on the label, covering repertoire from Mozart to Stravinsky, including a complete Beethoven sonata cycle and the complete Liszt ‘Années de pèlerinage’, which was named as one of the top ten recordings of 2012 by The New Yorker.

Louis Lortie 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 the same year he was a prizewinner at the Leeds Competition.