Review – Mozart Piano Concerto in B flat major, K. 450, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, conductor: Edo de Waart

In shapely phrases and with limpid tone, Andrea Lam began the concert on a more modest but no less demanding scale, making Mozart’s B flat Piano Concerto, K. 450, seem effortless work. Great skill lies behind such ease, while even greater musicality is necessary to achieve such eloquence of expression, assured in the opening movement, sustained through the gracious andante, and revelling in the pert exchanges of the rondo finale. 

Sydney Morning Herald

Review – Mozart Piano Concerto in B flat major, K. 450, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, conductor: Edo de Waart

By way of contrast the other work on the program was Mozart's Piano concerto No 15 K450 featuring young Sydney pianist Andrea Lam.

Although not as popular as some of his other concertos - the SSO last performed it in 1992 - it is one of Mozart's best and is considered the most challenging to the pianist.

Lam, with her fine balance of delicacy and brilliance, was more than equal to the task and her faultless cadenzas - both by Mozart himself - showed why she took out the keyboard section in Symphony Australia's 1999 Young Performer of the Year Award.

Currently studying in New York, it is to be hoped that Sydney audiences see and hear much more of this impressive talent.

Manly Daily

Review – Mozart Piano Concerto in B flat major, K. 450, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, conductor: Edo de Waart

Pianist Andrea Lam, under Conductor Edo de Waart, presented Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 15 in B flat K 450 which Mozart originally wrote for a personal performance: as a consequence, it presents a number of technical challenges to the modern virtuoso.

From the opening bars, this performance succeeded due to the respectful classical balance that de Waart brought to all the elements of this mature Mozart score: fine string playing, resonant winds and perfectly balanced volume between Lam’s playing and the orchestra.

Lam’s technique was well suited to this performance: relaxed, engaging and at times sparkling, she quickly established a close relationship with the other musicians.

This performance was a delight from beginning to end, a fine lesson in how to get Mozart “right”.

State of the Arts

Review – Mozart Piano Concerto in C major, K. 467, West Australian Symphony Orchestra, conductor: Edo de Waart

Andrea Lam was an unfailingly nimble and notationally accurate soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto in C, K. 467. And the clarity of this young pianist’s keyboard contribution was beyond reproach.

The West Australian

Review – Mozart Piano Concerto in G major, K. 453, Queensland Orchestra, conductor: Muhai Tang

Andrea Lam was the concerto soloist and while her sound was arguably understated in terms of balance, her melting lyricism, filigree touch and spirited eloquence were compelling. She played with a firm purpose, attention to nuance and produced a spectrum of ravishing colour.

Warm liquid exchanges between ensemble and pianist effectively animated the performance. Lam's cadenzas were reflective and spacious and her performance was invested with as much emotional meaning as it was finely polished

The Australian

Review – Shostakovich Piano Concerto no. 1, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, conductor: Sir William Southgate

Andrea Lam’s exposition of the Shostakovitch Piano Concerto no. 1 (1933) was nothing short of revelatory. Her musical intuition led her through patches of pastiche, wild emotional swings, mockery, satire and overall repudiation of traditional Russian breast-beating anxieties with the same clarity and spontaneity that drove the composer himself.

Not for him the deep and meaningfuls, nor for Miss Lam. He just wrote the dots and she just played them, her fidelity to his instructions the best tribute she could pay to him and the best show of her prodigious talent.

The Advertiser

Review – Rachmaninoff Variations on a Theme by Paganini, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, conductor: Lawrence Renes

SYMPHONY IN THE DOMAIN – The clouds rolled in, looked menacing, then rolled out again and 140,000 people breathed a sigh of relief.

Lam romped through Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini with great style and gave the crowd a thrilling display of virtuosity in the breathless finale.

Sydney Morning Herald

Review – Beethoven Triple Concerto, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, conductor: Alexander Lazarev

What was immediately impressive about the three young Australian soloists … was the quality, projection and finish of their sound. These were soloists with an inbuilt instinct to project to a large hall.

Lam has a bright sense of phrasing and definition, and the interaction of all three was engaging.

Sydney Morning Herald

Review – Mozart Piano Concerto in B flat, K. 450, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, conductor: Markus Stenz

Young Sydney pianist Andrea Lam took on the solo in Mozart’s Concerto No. 15 in B flat, treating the work with care and a dexterity that rarely faltered. The interpretation showed sympathy with the piece’s limpid passage work and every so often gave glimpses of the composer’s astonishing mix of sophistication and expressive simplicity.

The Age

Review – Australian National Academy of Music Recital

I enjoyed Andrea Lam’s performance of Glazunov’s Op. 72 Variations more than anything else in the evening … there was something enriching about watching and hearing this young player work her confident way through an obscure but eminently suitable piece of music.

The Age

Review – Sydney Festival, recital – Haydn, Brahms, Granados, Chopin

A recital is a bit like a job interview, it can demonstrate an extreme degree of specialisation, or, as in Andrea Lam’s Government House concert, a variety of areas of expertise.

Lam, still in statu pupillari, took on some of the heavies in piano music – Haydn, Brahms, Granados and Chopin – in a program which confirmed her reputation for a prodigious technique, and which displayed her maturing interpretative skills.

Haydn’s Sonata in C (Op 79) is music written by an old master for a young – and, as it happens, female, virtuoso. Accordingly it has a certain breadth of structure which carries a dazzlingly ornate entablature. Lam played it with agile grace, making the sinuous scale passages of the first movement into something more than mere trompe l’oeil and giving the lyrical second movement the right restrained pathos.

Brahms’s six Op 118 piano pieces are also late-period works, dealing in part with reminiscence and nostalgia. Lam’s performance – again technically astounding … was terrific, and in the final Intermezzo, with its reluctance to finish, she got it just right.

Granados – represented by two of the Goyescas – and Chopin (the A flat Polonaise Op 53) are both self-consciously virtuosic, and Lam’s determination and flair was considerable. She did nice tonal things, too, with the picturesque aspects of the “Lament” with its nightingale calls.

Sydney Morning Herald

Review – Rising Stars Series, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, recital – Beethoven, Schumann, Prokofiev, Chopin, Stravinsky

On Sunday, 19-year-old Australian pianist Andrea Lam gave a solo recital as part of the Melbourne Symphony’s Rising Stars series.

Sunday’s concert demonstrated that she is unwilling at this early stage to be pigeon-holed as she presented works by Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky.

The focal points of the event were Schumann’s Humoreske and Prokofiev’s fourth Piano Sonata. Their complex lyrical dimensions were projected in a clean, measured manner.

In most of the shorter works – Beethoven’s op. 34 Variations, Schumann’s Abegg Variations, and Stravinsky’s Etudes – Lam remained just as committed to producing the appropriate degree of grace, or strength.

The Age

Review – Chopin Piano Concerto no. 1 in e minor, Queensland Orchestra, conductor: Michael Christie

As soloist in Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E Minor, young Sydney pianist Andrea Lam highlighted the introverted filigree of the music with some finely measured, expressive phrasing.

In the second movement Lam launched into her own rhapsodic reveries over the orchestra’s discreet commentary.

The Courier Mail

Review – Barber Piano Concerto, Queensland Orchestra, conductor: Michael Christie

There was no tentativeness from Andrew Lam, soloist in Samuel Barber’s Piano Concerto. With limited time in the limelight, in a work that gives equal billing to soloist and orchestra, she was forthright and lyrical, as required.

The Courier Mail

Review – Mozart Piano Concerto in B flat, K. 595, Sydney Symphony, conductor: Michael Dauth

In the Mozart concerto, Lam’s playing was convincing and precise with a fine sense of melodic colour in the treble. Lam’s talent is prodigious and promising.

Sydney Morning Herald

Review – Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto no. 1, Queensland Orchestra, conductor: Wing-sie Yip

Lam’s formidable technique almost leaves you breathless. With enviable ease, she scaled the dynamic ascending chords with which Tchaikovsky so triumphantly began his first concerto.

The Courier Mail

The Courier Mail

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