It's 2003 and Robert J Harth is facing every arts administrator's nightmare: the star soloist has cancelled. Worse, it's Maurizio Pollini, arguably the world's greatest living interpreter of Chopin, who has promised to play half a programme of the composer's music to a jam-packed Carnegie Hall, where Harth is executive and artistic director. Any replacement will have to be at the very top of his or her game.
Louis Lortie, the French-Canadian pianist shoulder tapped to step in, is not at the top of his game. He has fractured his knee in a skiing accident. Moreover, Lortie has never played Carnegie Hall. Despite a flourishing 20-year career, he's barely played New York and not at all in the previous two years. When Lortie makes his way to the stage he is on crutches and must rest his right leg on a block for elevation. He launches into a programme of Chopin etudes and brings the house down.
"It's so long ago now," says Lortie, who this month performs Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No.2 in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin with the NZ Symphony Orchestra. "I've had other concerts [at Carnegie Hall] since and it's always an incredible thrill. The first thing you think about when you go to rehearse in the afternoon is the number of famous people who have walked on that stage; it's quite a thing on your shoulders."
Standing in for a legend like Pollini – that's another thing on the shoulders. "When you replace someone they are usually more famous than you," Lortie concedes. "And you have to contend with the audience, who have come for that musician and expect you to deliver as well if not better than the proposed artist." Here we are now, entertain us.
While Lortie is particularly admired for his Chopin, Rachmaninov is part of his family DNA. Lortie's grandmother saw Rachmaninov perform live and was at the premiere of the composer's Variations on a Theme of Corelli.
