Louis Lortie has earned an international reputation as a versatile musician critically acclaimed for the fresh perspective and individuality he brings to the grand masters of the piano repertoire. In demand on five continents for more than thirty years, Louis Lortie performs with the most prestigious orchestras and in major concert halls around the world. A prolific artist, he has produced more than 45 recordings for Chandos Records featuring the pillars of piano literature. He is followed by more than 300,000 listeners monthly on streaming platforms and generated more than 6 million streams in 2022.
In Great Britain, his long-standing relationship with the BBC, the BBC Symphony and BBC Philharmonic orchestras have resulted in numerous recordings and concerts as well than more than ten invitations at the BBC Proms. In his native Canada, for half a century, he has regularly played with all the major orchestras: Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa and Calgary. With Kurt Masur, he was a regular soloist with the Orchestre National de France and the Gewandhaus orchestra during Masur’s tenure as Music Director. He has also collaborated with the Deutsche Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra, the Leipzig MDR Orchestra in Germany. In the United States, he has performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Symphony Orchestras of Dallas, San Francisco, Detroit, Milwaukee, San Diego, Seattle, New Jersey, and many more. Further afield, his collaborations include the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra where he was Artist in Residence, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, as well as the Adelaide and Sydney Symphony Orchestras and the Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo in Brazil. Regular partnerships with chefs include, among others, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Edward Gardner, Sir Andrew Davis, Jaap Van Zweden, Simone Young, Antoni Wit and Thierry Fischer.
In recital and in chamber music, Louis Lortie regularly performs at Wigmore Hall in London, the Philharmonie de Paris, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Beethovenfest Bonn and the Liszt Festival Raiding. He is particularly famous for his performances of the complete Liszt “Annees de Pelerinage’ and the complete Chopin Etudes. In North America he performs regularly at Salle Bougie in Montreal, and at Koerner Hall at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. At Salle Bougie as Artist in Residence during the 24/25 season, he performed four concerts there, and in 21/22 and 22/23, his Beethoven Sonata Cycle there, which was filmed and broadcast on Medici TV. Right before the pandemic he performed the complete Liszt “Annees” for Lincoln Center Great Performers, for Cal Performances, and for Segerstrom Hall in Costa Mesa, CA. He has performed the complete Chopin Etudes in many venues in North America, including Carnegie Hall and Chicago’s Orchestra Hall.. For more than twenty years, with Hélène Mercier, the Lortie-Mercier duo has brought new perspectives on the repertoire for four hands and two pianos in concert as well as their numerous recordings.
His discography, exclusively for Chandos records, includes, in the solo piano repertoire, 7 volumes of works by Chopin, Beethoven’s 32 sonatas, the complete works of Ravel, Liszt’s Years of Pilgrimage and two volumes of works by Faure. With Edward Gardner he recorded Lutoslawksi’s Concerto and Variations on a Theme of Paganini with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, particularly praised by critics, as well as the complete concertos of Saint-Saens with the Orchester Philharmonique de la BBC or the Vaughan Williams concerto with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Peter Oundjian.
Louis Lortie is co-founder and Artistic Director of the LacMus Festival, which has been held yearly since 2017 on Lake Como. He was master in residence at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Brussels from 2017 to 2022; he continues to mentor pianists of exceptional talent by introducing the new generation through concert cycles, recently a cycle of Beethoven/Liszt symphonies at Wigmore Hall and the Dresden International Festival as well as the Scriabin Marathon at the LacMus and Bolzano Bozen Festivals.
Louis Lortie made his debut with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra at the age of thirteen, in 1984, he won the first prize of the Busoni competition and the fourth prize of the Leeds Competition. He studied with Yvonne Hubert (student of the legendary Alfred Cortot ), with Dieter Weber in Vienna, then with Leon Fleisher. He was honored with the title of “Officer of the Order of Canada” in 1992, and “Chevalier Ordre national du Québec” in 1997, and received an honorary degree from the University of Laval that same year.
