Louis Lortie in Sydney

Louis Lortie plays preludes

If you had told me I would be listening to 57 preludes one after the other,  I would have thought you were joking, but yesterday evening that is exactly what happened.

The virtuosic French-Canadian pianist Louis Lortie played 9 preludes by Fauré, 24 by by Scriabin and then, after an interval, Chopin's series of 24 preludes including the well known Raindrop Prelude D flat major. Lortie was wonderful as you can hear in this sample  and I came away with a whole new feeling for preludes.

Lortie played for nearly two hours, often looking towards the ceiling as he concentrated on his inner music. As he stood to take his bows he looked rather shattered, as if he was still in the grip of the music. I thought it very gracious of him to sign CDs with such good humour before he had really had time to recover.


Watch Louis Lortie play Chopin Etudes (below):