Louis Lortie

There’s nothing ‘academic’ about the 27 studies Chopin published almost 200 hundred years ago. Redefining what the piano might be, each inhabits a self-contained world, sometimes soul-searchingly anguished, sometimes bristling with dazzlingly virtuosic shock and awe. Ops 10 and 25 set a benchmark that remains one of the ultimate challenges for any pianist.

Some four decades in the making, the award-winning Canadian pianist’s multi-disc Chopin survey has attracted enthusiastic praise. ‘Playing of the most patrician poise, fluidity, and tonal finesse’ says Gramophone; while for the BBC Music Magazine Lortie is simply the 'model Chapionist: eloquent but never sentimental, elegant without sounding effete, dramatic but never exaggerated, harmonically luminous, structurally immaculate – surprising’.