As someone noticed during their interviews, one starts a sentence, the other ends it. Almost as if they applied to the verbal conversation the same modes typical of the chamber music dialogue and vice versa. Louis Lortie and Hélène Mercier started playing together in the 1980s. Their recordings of Ravel, Mozart and Schubert have become real bestsellers! When Mercier moved to Paris and Lortie to Berlin, the activity of the duo underwent a long pause.
However, the two Canadian pianists – whose respective solo careers certainly knew no interruptions – have recently come back as a Duo with renewed enthusiasm. Lortie says he appreciates his musical partner’s love for surprise and her unexpected choices; Mercier, on the other hand, loves his friend and colleague’s uncompromised interpretative depth. The Duo comes back to Sacile after 10 years and the completion ofrecording projects on Rachmaninov, Poulenc and Saint-Saëns, always for the Chandos label.
« Lortie and Mercier are accomplices, like twin brother and sister.
They share the same musical vision and the same desire to
paint everything they touch with a profound sense of beauty,
almost as if they were the King Midas of the piano. »
Frédéric Cardin (www.icimusique.ca)
SERGEJ RACHMANINOV (Velikij Novgorod, 1873 - Beverly Hills, 1943)
Suite n. 1 in sol minore, op.5 per due pianoforti
MAURICE RAVEL (Ciboure, 1875 - Parigi, 1937)
Rhapsodie espagnole, per pianoforte a quattro mani
SERGEJ RACHMANINOV (Velikij Novgorod, 1873 - Beverly Hills, 1943)
Symphonic Dances op. 45, per due pianoforti