BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
The name of Andrea Lam’s concert is amusingly candid. Why would you want to listen to a program filled with Sad Piano music?
Funnily enough, the pianist reckons that’s exactly what you want to hear. And she’s right: open a streaming platform, and you’ll find endless albums and playlists with the term ‘sad piano’ in their titles. The surprising popularity of this genre is one reason Andrea has curated a program of solo works to celebrate the theme.
The other reason is that Andrea loves sad piano music, too.
“Whenever I’m by myself and with the piano, and I sit down and play something, I’m usually pretty mellow,” Andrea shares. As she spends her time at the instrument, she will enter “a beautiful space that feels like an escape, or like some solace”.
“That’s when I turn to this music.”
Andrea is a wildly accomplished Australian pianist who has performed music as sprightly as a Mozart piano concerto, and as delightful as a dance by Bach. But she became particularly interested in moody music during the early years of the pandemic, immersing herself in works by Schumann (“the ultimate sad piano writer”) and other pieces that struck her as deeply personal and reflective.
Serendipitously, Australian composer Matthew Hindson had been experiencing something similar – so when he reached out to tell her he’d written some new piano pieces, and he hoped she would play them, it was a perfectly mellow match.
“I said, ‘This is exactly the sort of music that I am responding to right now, and feel like I need – and feel like a lot of people need during this time’,” Andrea recalls.
Fast-forward a few years, and the composer has published 13 Sad Piano pieces with Faber Music; a recording of Andrea playing them will be released later this year.
Andrea has handpicked six of these pieces to feature in her Sad Piano performance, which is part of the Intimate Salon Experiences 2024 series in the Melbourne Recital Centre. With titles such as Lullaby, Isolation, and Love, Andrea says the Primrose Potter Salon “really fits that music, being the right space and the right vibe”.
“That’s always really important in how a concert feels – just to have that intimacy – so I’m excited about doing this music in that space, for this audience,” Andrea says.
“It’s nice when those things align, and when it feels like everything works.”
The pianist has also selected a few older works that “reflect that same aesthetic”: Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, and Chopin’s Nocturne in C-sharp minor and Polonaise in A-flat major.
Pairing old and new music on her program sends a remarkable message: the ability for music to move us – to evoke our most intimate emotions – has not changed for centuries.
Andrea believes that while musical languages may evolve, the works themselves stem from a “deeply human place that has been there since the beginning of time”.
“When you think about so many of the most popular piano pieces, there’s Clair de Lune, and Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata – all of these very slow and reflective, intimate pieces. And I think they’re so iconic, because I feel like people do need to be in that space,” Andrea says.
“It doesn’t mean that they’re sad, necessarily – but just the world is a lot sometimes. And so sometimes, you need things like that.”
Find comfort with Andrea Lam – Sad Piano in the Primrose Potter Salon, 7pm April 18. View the full Intimate Salon Experiences 2024 program on the Melbourne Recital Centre website.
UPDATE: Free tickets are available to Hindson/Lam – Sad Piano at Sydney Conservatorium of Music on 11 December and the album can be streamed and purchased online.
Images supplied. Credit Keith Saunders.
