Andrea Lam performs Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ alongside Vaughan Williams’ vision of Antarctica.
When Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto premiered in Leipzig in 1811, the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung dubbed it ‘one of the most original, most inventive, most effective, but also most difficult of all existing concertos.’ ARIA Award-winning pianist and presenter of the Australian television show The Piano, Andrea Lam returns to CSO to perform this monumental Concerto, whose grandeur is reflected in its nickname (not given by Beethoven), the ‘Emperor’.
We pair it with Vaughan Williams’ sweeping Sinfonia antartica, inspired by Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated 1912 expedition to the South Pole. The symphony, Vaughan Williams’ seventh, began life as music for the 1948 film Scott of the Antarctic and the orchestral palette is extended by soprano Amy Moore, the high voices of the CSO Chorus and a wind machine to depict the beauty and desolation of the Antarctic landscape. This performance in Llewellyn Hall is accompanied by historic photography from Captain Scott’s final journey.
The concert opens with a CSO commission, the world premiere of a new work by Melbourne-based cellist and composer Caerwen Martin, whose Stars Come Out in a Midnight Sky CSO performed in 2024.
PROGRAM
Caerwen Martin
New Work*
Ludwig van Beethoven
Piano Concerto No.5, the 'Emperor;
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Sinfonia antartica (Symphony No.7)
ARTISTS
Jessica Cottis: conductor
Andrea Lam: piano
Amy Moore: soprano
High voices of the CSO Chorus
Canberra Symphony Orchestra
* Premiere of CSO commission