Written by Hugh Robertson

Andrea Lam is certainly no stranger to the Sydney Symphony. The award-winning Australian pianist first performed with the Orchestra at the tender age of 13, performing the first movement of Shostakovich’s Second Piano Concerto at Sydney Town Hall under Sir William Southgate.

In the years since she has been a regular fixture on Sydney stages, but there were often long gaps between appearances while she carved out a rich and varied career based in New York City. Now officially back home, Lam is reestablishing herself as a star in the Australian firmament, throwing herself into solo, chamber and concerto performances, the recording studio, and touring all around the country at breakneck speed.

“It has been really busy,” says Lam from her Sydney home on a rare day off. “But in a way that is my dream. It has been a lot of different music – a lot of solo repertoire, some concertos, some chamber music. I love doing all of them, and I especially love doing all of them mixed up. I always find that I learn a lot in each different setting.”

Lam moved back to Sydney at a hugely uncertain time. It was the height of the pandemic, and all the work she had done to build a successful career in New York had collapsed overnight. But despite having more support in Australia in terms of friends and family, there were no guarantees that she would be able to find the same level of work here.

“That was definitely a very real concern. But in New York, everything was cancelled, and it was bleak, and it was hard to see what the future looked like. And I wasn’t sure what my career would look like after that, because it was so jarring – especially as a freelancer.”

Thankfully it has been a happy homecoming, and in October, Lam takes centre stage as soloist in Mozart’s beloved Piano Concerto No.22, performing with the Orchestra under the baton of conductor Johannes Fritzsch. Lam has a long history with Mozart, having previously recorded two concertos for the ABC and performed solo and concerto works all around the world – and she absolutely lights up when we start talking about his music.

“A lot of us have relationships with Mozart from childhood, which is a very different experience [to playing him as an adult],” says Lam. “The notes themselves are so beautiful and perfect, and it all just fits, and it is fairly easy to get your fingers around the notes. But as a child, your experiences are less nuanced, and as an adult approaching the same music, it gets really interesting.

The great Austrian pianist Artur Schnabel said, ‘Mozart’s sonatas are too easy for children, and too difficult for adults.’ And that’s exactly true!

So how do you express all these really subtle underlying nuances, and all those hidden complexities? That’s where I think the meaning is. Because beauty is always foremost with Mozart, all of the nuances of feeling and all the creative things that he did are less obvious. He doesn’t show you the process – he shows you the answer. Another great pianist and composer, Ferrucio Busoni, said, ‘Together with the puzzle, Mozart gives you the solution.’

It is much easier to access a flawed human being – you see their struggles, and you identify with their struggles, and you can scream at the world all together. But with Mozart, it is those same very intense emotions, but because of his brilliance and the beauty of his language it is a little bit harder to access.”

Having spent so many years with Mozart’s music, living with the notes and getting deep under the skin of these pieces, one could forgive Lam for thirsting for new experiences and new composers. But Lam remains invigorated, and fascinated by the seeming-endless depth and complexity in this music.

“It still baffles me how much there is to discover in music,” she says. “A lifetime is not enough. I find that I have more questions as I get older – I want to know the stuff behind the music, the things that make it work, what it is trying to say, and what it means. And that gets more complicated as you get older, trying to figure it out. When you are young it’s just, ‘this is good, I like this’. It’s much more direct relationship.

Being older you have more experience – playing chamber music, playing his trios, playing the violin sonatas, playing with opera singers – and all of these different facets of Mozart really help as an interpreter. Especially with instruments like voice and violin, where there is that element that we don’t have as pianists of just following the line. It is fascinating to see how his music breathes in a different way on different instruments.”

This concerto offers a superb example of the variety of Mozart’s writing, as it was in fact the first time he had ever incorporated clarinets into one of his orchestral works. Mozart would of course go on to write a great many works for the instrument, including the stunning Clarinet Quintet and Clarinet Concerto, but in this work you can still hear him testing things out, experimenting with this new sound, and liking what he heard.

“It is really fun to think about the beginnings of the clarinet in that way,” says Lam. “It’s so wacky, in the third movement, when it just goes into this almost prayer-like conversation between the winds and the strings. It is really fun to think of that being a new sound colour, and how he explored it.

And I love the clarinet. Everybody has their instruments that they love, and clarinet is one of mine.”

Lam’s upcoming performances with the Orchestra continues a long and rich connection going back many years, one that saw a new chapter written recently when Lam was one of the first soloists to play in the renewed Sydney Opera House Concert Hall, performing as accompanist to Danish baritone Bo Skovhus in his lieder recital in August.

“It was amazing,” Lam says with awe in her voice. “Everyone has spoken about how incredible it is to be in the new space, and how it feels, but that’s exactly right. It was so emotional. As a kid I imagined what it would be like to play there – I had a poster of the orchestra on my cupboard door as a kid!

I had some time on the stage just with the piano, and it was really just beautiful to do that and to hear the piano in that space. And then when Bo came in, it was really interesting, because it didn’t feel like the huge hall that it is, instead the sound felt like it embraced you. What we were hearing on stage felt lovely – it felt very warm, and clear, and like you could play with the sound in the space a lot.”

Of course Lam knows the Concert Hall well as an audience member as well as a performer, having grown up in Sydney and obsessed with classical music. So her perspective on the excitement around the renewed space comes as much from the stalls as it does from the stage.

“It is rare, I think, to have an experience where everybody feels so strongly. Because it is a place that resonates, that we all care about so much and have had so many memories with. So it is very fun to share this excitement, to feel all of this together – the musicians as much as the audience. All of us just gawking at the new space together.

And this time I had my seven year-old son with me, and bringing him to that too – it had a lot of echoes. Concerts can be just a blip sometimes, but to think of it more continually, with all those resonances of a space like the Opera House that has meant so much to so many of us over the years.”

Lam wasn’t much older than 7 when she made her debut with the Orchestra. What does she remember about that time?

“I remember a few things,” she says. “I remember just the sheer excitement of hearing other instruments, and performing with them. This was really the first time I had performed with other instruments, and I was just overwhelmed by the colours and the sounds. And I remember walking offstage and just being in a daze, and not knowing which direction to go in. It was a lot to process. But it was so exciting.

I was thinking recently about how grateful I am to have had that experience. That was really special, and that experience has shaped me, and made me do what I do.”

Lam’s performances with the Orchestra have always been special experiences, right from the start, and these upcoming concerts will be no different.