in San Fran as reported in San Francisco Chronicle

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Argerich absent, but Lortie plays a bracing Schumann

Joshua Kosman, Chronicle Music Critic Saturday, April 17, 2004

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A scheduled performance by pianist Martha Argerich is best thought of as a sort of lottery. You buy a ticket and cross your fingers, and if you're very lucky, Argerich shows up and plays.

No such luck for San Francisco Symphony patrons this week. Argerich was supposed to return to Davies Symphony Hall on Thursday night to perform the Schumann Piano Concerto, but she pulled out just two days earlier, pleading bronchitis.

For all anyone knows, that story may even be true, although Argerich's well-known history of cancellations suggests that she has some kind of superstitious aversion to performing on days whose names end in Y.

But one only has to think back to her breathtaking (and long-overdue) Symphony debut in 1998 -- or her miraculous performances of the Schumann during the Symphony's 2000 European tour -- to know what kind of artistic sorcery we missed out on.

In the end, it fell to Louis Lortie to fill the thankless role of not- Argerich at a moment's notice, and he did it with perfect grace and poise. In a rough-and-ready but effective partnership with guest conductor Charles Dutoit (who happens to be Argerich's ex-husband), Lortie lent Schumann's music a compelling blend of introspection and virtuoso razzle-dazzle.

The first part of that equation proved particularly engaging. To me, Lortie has always been most impressive as a poet of the piano (especially in the music of Chopin), and his luxuriant but focused account of the concerto's central slow movement brought out all the music's delicacy.

The more extroverted outer movements covered the ground capably, if without any notable strokes of brilliance. The most striking aspect of the performance was Lortie and Dutoit's joint decision to stomp through the opening pages of the finale in almost alarmingly high spirits.

The rest of the program offered an unpredictable mixture of rhetorical fervor and rhythmic laxity. Dutoit, who has not conducted the Symphony since his 1985 debut, has a patrician podium manner, with elegantly balletic gestures that emphasize lyrical sweep at the expense of metric precision.

The results tend to be grand but sometimes vague, although the urgency of his readings can often carry the music along. That's what happened in the surprisingly effective performance of Prokofiev's Sixth Symphony that occupied the second half of the program.

Surprising, because this is a work whose odd combination of heartfelt lamentation and almost cornball high-stepping is particularly hard to get right.

The first two movements take the acerbities of Prokofiev's youthful melodic style in a softer and more plainspoken direction, with results that sometimes searingly eloquent, sometimes merely windy.

But with the finale, we suddenly find ourselves at some kind of Soviet barn dance as the orchestra, driven by the violins, kicks up its heels before the somber strains of the opening make one last return.

Dutoit propelled the whole thing forward with welcome force, shaping the broad melodies of the first movement stylishly and giving Prokofiev's thunderous rhetoric its due. Even the bright-spirits finale sounded oddly infectious.

Ravel's "Mother Goose" Suite opened the program, in a tender but rhythmically sluggish rendition that exposed the weakness of Dutoit's languorous technique. The most concise playing came in the fourth movement, "Conversations of Beauty and the Beast," with contrabassoonist Steven Braunstein in the affecting latter role.


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San Francisco Symphony The subscription program repeats at 8 tonight in Davies Symphony Hall. Tickets: $20-$97. Call (415) 864-6000 or go to www. sfsymphony.org.
E-mail Joshua Kosman at jkosman@sfchronicle.com.

He did again in New York according to NY Times:

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A Pianist's Hands Encompass Two Sides of Central Park
By JAMES BARRON

Published: April 30, 2004


He dashed out of Avery Fisher Hall last night sounding like a guy who needed fast wheels, or maybe a rocket. The pianist Louis Lortie was late.

The limousine that carried him across town did not exactly set a land-speed record; it lumbered through Central Park, up Madison Avenue and west on 83rd Street. When it stopped in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mr. Lortie was as time-conscious as anyone who has ever tried to squeeze too much into too little time and been confounded by logistics: "We could have been here 10 minutes ago with a cab."

What he was squeezing into a single evening were two concerts.

He was 20 minutes late for a recital in the Met's Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium. His excuse was legitimate: he had been across town, playing a concerto with the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center. He had witnesses: an audience of almost 2,800, an orchestra of almost 100, and the conductor Charles Dutoit.

And he had another audience waiting at the Met.

Scheduling two performances in the same evening was not a stunt to win Mr. Lortie a place in the record books. At the Philharmonic, he was just filling in for Martha Argerich, who Philharmonic officials said had called in sick a few days ago. Mr. Lortie had substituted for her in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago and knew the piece she was scheduled to play, Schumann's Concerto in A minor, Opus 54.

Mr. Lortie's manager, Seldy Cramer, said the Philharmonic's artistic administrator, Jeremy Geffen, had called on Mr. Lortie when it became clear that Ms. Argerich would not appear. The Philharmonic wanted him to play on Wednesday. No problem. The Philharmonic wanted him to play this morning at 11. No problem. The Philharmonic wanted him to play tomorrow at 8 p.m. No problem.

But there was a fourth concert in the series, the one last night. And that posed a big problem. Ms. Cramer and Mr. Lortie huddled. "He said, 'What time does the Philharmonic start?' " Ms. Cramer said. "We looked on the Web. It said 7:30. Louis said, 'I'll do it if you can get the Met to start the concert later.' I e-mailed Jeremy and said O.K., if you could program the Schumann first and we get Hilde to go along with it.'"

Hilde is Hilde Limondjian, who oversees concerts at the Met. She had booked Mr. Lortie more than a year ago, and could have held him to an exclusive commitment. "Most people would have said no in my place," she said.

But she said yes. The Philharmonic rearranged the first half of its program, beginning with the Schumann and playing the planned opener, Ravel's Mother Goose Suite, second.

Conductors and singers have occasionally appeared at different Lincoln Center halls on the same night, playing short works. But what Mr. Lortie did - play a full-fledged concerto, then a full recital program - was unusual. "In my lifetime, I haven't known a pianist who's played a concerto and a recital in different halls on the same night, let alone on both sides of Central Park," said Ms. Limondjian, who has been the Met's in-house impresario since 1969.

The Philharmonic, though, said there was nothing new about it: The violinist Henri Vieuxtemps did it in 1844. The Philharmonic interrupted Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 when Vieuxtemps walked in. He and the orchestra played a piece he had written. Then he left, and the orchestra played the rest of the Beethoven.

No, Mr. Lortie said in the limousine, he did not play the Schumann any faster than on Wednesday night, when he had no second concert on his schedule. Before the concert last night, he said, he and Mr. Dutoit were joking about too much music and too little time.

"He is famous for wanting to start on time," Mr. Lortie said. In Montreal, "I remember him going into a fit: 'Why aren't we starting?' "

Mr. Lortie said it was not the first time he was late to a concert. In Italy some years ago, he had had a flat tire. Nor was it the first time he had been an 11th-hour replacement. Ms. Cramer said that when Maurizio Pollini canceled a recital at Carnegie Hall last year, Mr. Lortie stepped in - with some difficulty. He was on crutches, having injured his leg while skiing.

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Concert Doubleheader for Philharmonic Sub
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: April 30, 2004


Filed at 2:14 a.m. ET
NEW YORK (AP) -- He was late for his piano recital at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but Louis Lortie had a good excuse. He just performed at Avery Fisher Hall with the New York Philharmonic, filling in at the last minute for an ailing superstar.
West Side, East Side, it was the 45-year-old Canadian pianist's night.
And when his nearly two hour doubleheader program was over Thursday night, he still had the strength for two encores, much to the delight of the Met audience.

``The hell with his stamina. The beauty,'' said Susan Rose, an influential classical music patron and newfound Lortie fan.
It all began when Martha Argerich informed the Philharmonic that she had bronchitis and would not be able to travel to New York. She last performed in March in Europe and was scheduled to play the Schumann Piano Concerto in mid-April in San Francisco with her ex-husband, Charles Dutoit, conducting. She canceled, and Lortie, who has played with Dutoit numerous times, was asked to fill in.
``They called me as I just got off a plane from Europe,'' Lortie said in an interview in Central Park a few hours before Thursday's performances. ``I was preparing another concert with a violinist whom I had not met for a long time. So we only had 24 hours. So that meant I had to prepare those violin sonatas with him and the Schumann also, which I had not played for three years.''
Before committing himself to the San Francisco Symphony, he tracked down the score to make sure he could do it.
``It's such beautiful music that it takes you,'' he said. ``You don't have to take it so much yourself.''
Late last week, the New York Philharmonic called Lortie's manager and asked if he would be available to substitute for Argerich in four concerts this week. He already was booked at the Met to play at 8 p.m. Thursday. The Philharmonic concert was scheduled for 7:30 p.m. His only other appearance with the orchestra was in 1996.
``I said he's available every day but Thursday,'' manager Seldy Cramer said. But when she asked Lortie if he would play with the Philharmonic on Thursday, ``he said, 'I'll do it.'''
The museum agreed that Lortie could be late for the recital, which featured two big works by Schumann -- ``Bunte Blaetter'' and ``Humoreske in B Flat'' -- and Mendelssohn's ``Variations serieuses'' and ``Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso.''
When Lortie arrived in New York from Houston on Tuesday afternoon, he immediately went to a piano store. It was his birthday, but he had to practice the concerto for Wednesday's dress rehearsal and concert. (They caught wind of his birthday and surprised him with a cake.)
To accommodate the Met, the Philharmonic juggled the program, starting with the concerto, rather than Ravel's ``Mother Goose Suite.'' The concert got under way at 7:37 p.m. and Lortie finished at 8:08 p.m.
Despite having only one rehearsal, Lortie and the orchestra made beautiful music together. Especially lovely were the piano's conversations with the solo clarinet and violas and cellos, the dreamy cascades of piano chords, and the noble finale.
Lortie, still in tails and sweat dripping from his forehead, hustled out of Lincoln Center and smiled as he stepped into a waiting stretch limousine.
``It was wonderful,'' Cramer told him as they embraced in the back seat.
Then it was off to the East Side.
During the ride, Lortie recalled that Dutoit looked at his watch as they were playing and told him, ``You're not going to make it by 8:15.''
The limo arrived at the Met at 8:19 p.m. and tension mounted as Lortie and Cramer struggled to unlock the car's rear doors. After the chauffeur got them out, Lortie dashed to the men's room to freshen up, and the Met's Mikel Frank announced to the audience: ``The eagle has landed. We're about to start.''
Lortie was in complete control during the 85 minutes of playing. As in the concerto, he played the program by memory. Much of the music was in minor key and Lortie captured the mood with great emotion -- at times, he appeared near tears. At cadences, his hands froze over the keys like a swooping bird that suddenly halts its flight. During lighter moments, he danced by twisting and turning his body.
A year ago, Lortie made his Carnegie Hall recital debut by filling in for Maurizio Pollini, who was sidelined by a bad back. ``After that, now I'm invited back on my own, not to replace somebody else, which is wonderful,'' he said.
Maybe the Philharmonic will invite him back, too. But first he had to return to Avery Fisher bright and early on Friday for an 11 a.m. concert. His final concert with the Schumann and the Philharmonic is Saturday night.

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What an artist !!! What else can I say?!
AndrewG

You've said enough - Lortie is indeed a great artist.