February 14, 2005 -

Ottawa, Canada -- The celebrated Montreal-born pianist Louis Lortie will perform Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major in National Arts Centre Orchestra concerts led by conductor James Judd on Thursday, February 24 and Friday, February 25 at 20:00 in the NAC’s Southam Hall. These Bostonian Bravo concerts also include Tchaikovsky’s lush and evocative Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy, Richard Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration, and the suite from one of the most applauded movie scores ever written – Hitchcock’s Vertigo with music by Bernard Herrmann.

Andrew Craig, the new host of CBC Radio Two’s In Performance, will be onstage at the National Arts Centre both evenings to introduce the concert which is being recorded for future broadcast.

Louis Lortie, First Prize-winner of the Busoni Competition and a prize-winner at the Leeds International Piano Competition, has received wide acclaim for his interpretations of Ravel. He has performed Ravel’s complete piano works in London and in Montreal for the BBC and CBC, and he has also recorded the complete works on the Chandos label. The Piano Concerto in G major shows musical influences from the composer’s Basque homeland and from Mozart, but also includes a strong jazz influence acquired from Ravel’s American tour (including New Orleans) in 1928.

This evocative programme includes Tchaikovsky’s symphonic poem inspired by Shakespeare’s tragic tale of young love thwarted – the Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy ­– and Strauss’s highly pictorial composition Death and Transfiguration which musically describes the rapturous fantasies of a dying man.

The concert concludes with the Vertigo Suite by composer Bernard Herrmann, whose association with director Alfred Hitchcock has gone down in movie history as one of the great artistic collaborations of the twentieth century. Their films include The Trouble with Harry in 1955, The Man Who Knew Too Much in 1956 (in which Herrmann prominently appears as a symphony conductor in Royal Albert Hall), The Wrong Man in 1957, North by Northwest in 1959, Psycho in 1960, and Marnie in 1964. The score for Vertigo (1958) now ranks among the composer’s greatest achievements, with an entire book (Bernard Herrmann's Vertigo by David Cooper, Greenwood Press, 2001) devoted to a study of this music.

Tickets for these Bostonian Bravo Series concerts on February 24 and 25 are on sale now at $27.00, $46.00, $57.00 and $59.00, with box seats at $77.50 (GST and Facility Fee included) at the NAC Box Office (Monday to Saturday from 10:00 to 21:00), and through Ticketmaster (with surcharges) at 613-755-1111.  Ticketmaster may also be accessed through the NAC’s web-site at www.nac-cna.ca.  Half-price tickets for students in all sections of the hall are on sale in person at the NAC Box Office upon presentation of a valid student ID card. Groups of 20 and more save up to 20% on NAC Music, Theatre and Dance performances.  To book call 947-7000 ext. 384 or email grp@nac-cna.ca.

For more information please contact:
Jane Morris, Communications Officer,
National Arts Centre Orchestra
(613) 947-7000, ext. 335
jmorris@nac-cna.ca