“As a pianist, Lortie is both a compelling player and a purposeful thinker. The breadth and subtlety of his expressive range were shown in last night’s performance of Chopin’s F minor Concerto with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Tadaaki Otaka. This was, in fact, playing of a quite exceptional order, the music freshly examined and executed with inspiration. There was delicacy to Lortie’s touch, underpinned by strength and reason in his ideas. He phrased melodies with poetic nuance and conveyed the fact that the pianistic decoration is not a frothy ostentatious façade but has a fundamental structural and musical end.” (Daily Telegraph, July 1999) Lortie repeated this concert in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw the next evening, and plays the same work with the Pittsburgh Symphony this November. In celebration of the Chopin anniversary this year he also plays in the Harrod’s International Piano Series at London’s South Bank Centre in December, and was heard in recital at the Valldemossa Chopin Festival in Majorca this Summer. After the phenomenal success of his complete Beethoven sonata cycle at the Wigmore Hall last season he repeats it in the Berlin Philharmonie during the 1999/ 2000 season (7 concerts).