Fresh from successes at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York and the London BBC Proms (Gershwin and Ravel, both televised), Lortie plays the complete Beethoven piano sonatas at Wigmore Hall in 7 concerts this season, from November to March. Parallel cycles will also run in Toronto's North York Hall (started last season) and in Milan. He is midway through a Beethoven sonata cycle for Chandos Records, to which critical reaction so far has been ecstatic. "These are performances of some stature and depth that can hold their own with any of those listed above (Brendel, Gilels) - and given their distinction that is praise indeed. His account of the Eroica Variations is spacious and magisterial, virile yet sensitive, and the wide range of dynamic nuance and keyboard colour is there to illumine Beethoven's textures and not highlight the aritst's pianism. He succeeds in communicating the power of Beethoven's imagination; the part-writing in the fugue emerges with a masterly clarity, and is beautifully weighted and balanced." (Gramophone)