The stormy side of Chopin unleashed
If there is such a thing as a “Chopin style” of piano playing, it covers a wider range of interpretations than might be readily imagined. Louis Lortie, the French-Canadian pianist currently embarked on a cycle of Chopin recordings, approaches the composer in a way that feels fully authentic, yet it is a manner far removed from the patrician elegance often applied to his music. Never afraid to work the piano hard in his account of the 24 Preludes that dominated this lunchtime concert at Wigmore Hall, Lortie stressed the stormy romantic side of Chopin very convincingly.
Thinking big, Lortie shaped the Preludes into a single span of powerful effect; for him, these pearls need to be strung together, which is not to say that he overlooked details in even the tiniest of them. But he took time to settle. After a questingly rhapsodic opening with the Prelude No. 1 in C, followed by a No. 2 in A minor in which he stressed Chopin’s harmonic modernity, it seemed as if he couldn’t decide which kind of Chopin was for him, and some textures were muddy.
But focus returned again with the cello-like eloquence of the left hand in No. 6 in B minor, and from then on all the moods registered, with Lortie encompassing unrelenting torrents, glowing solemnity and brilliant virtuosity. That miniature tone poem nicknamed the “Raindrop” Prelude was beautifully sustained, with Lortie making the most of his instrument’s dusky tone, but the Fazioli also thundered powerfully in the middle of this piece. Any unevenness in Lortie’s Preludes paled next to their cumulative effect.
Lortie demonstrated his flair for programming by prefacing Chopin’s miniatures with a set of modernist miniatures. George Benjamin’s Shadowlines, dating from 2001 and subtitled “six canonic preludes”, provided imaginative contrast yet also suggested some unsuspected affinities: just as Poland’s greatest composer traced a French connection through his father and a life of exile in Paris, so one of Britain’s most outstanding contemporary composers has been almost an honorary Frenchman since his studies with Olivier Messiaen.
That characteristic French love of sonority certainly comes through in Shadowlines, though it is allied to a rigorous sense of structure. From a tantalising prologue through the first few preludes, Lortie played with intensity and wit. Even if the final two pieces didn’t quite seem to sustain the opening promise, this was an interesting juxtaposition from a thoughtful pianist.
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