I had first heard Lortie in recital 13 years ago, when he presented another challenging program—the complete Chopin Etudes—and performed them with a commanding technique and an interpretation that captured the musical essence of each of these 24 pieces. So I was looking forward to his recital on Tuesday, January 7, even if it meant getting to and from the concert in single digit temperatures.
The first set, Switzerland, consists of nine widely varied pieces, but I’ll just touch on some that stood out for me. Au bord d’une source evokes a journey on water, and Lortie’s playing—I could call it fluid
—illuminated this gorgeous piece. Orage depicts a storm, so one would expect thundering octaves, but here, and in some other pieces in the first set, Lortie tended to overpower some passages. His playing may have been appropriate in a 2000-seat concert hall, but in the 200-seat Benjamin Franklin Hall of the American Philosophical Society, the effect was overbearing. But in the next piece, Vallée D’Obermann, the most substantial (and, in my opinion, the best) work in the set, Lortie gave us a fine performance that conveyed all of its grandeur and lyricism.The first piece in the Italy set, Sposalizio, is very familiar to me, since I actually learned that piece in the days when I was a serious piano student. It remains a favorite (to listen to, that is). Perhaps the most Italian-sounding piece in the set is Canzonetta del Salvator Rosa, which sounds like a cheerful Italian street song. The famous Sonetto 104 del Petrarca was given a superb rendition by Lortie. For the final piece in the set, Abbé Liszt takes us on a terrifying but fascinating tour of his favorite musical locale, Hell, in Après une lecture de Dante
Lortie closed the evening with only one encore, but it’s a gem: Gondoliera, from the three-movement supplement to the Italy set entitled Venezia e Napoli. It was worth braving the cold for that work alone.