In early September, brilliant pianist Andrea Lam‘s played four performances of R. Strauss’ fiendish Burleske, with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra conducted by Simone Young, as part of the Orchestra’s Emirates Master Series, in the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall.
“In a change of mood Australian pianist Andrea Lam joins the SSO for Burleske, a sparkling and witty piece that Strauss wrote paying tribute to his twin heroes Brahms and Wagner. Its electrifying runs and arpeggios are carried off with calm assurance and the romantic passages are given a Rachmaninovian heft… One for the ages.” [5 STARS]
– Steve Moffatt, Limelight magazine, September 2025
“Strauss’s Burleske (1885-86) for piano and orchestra is full of Stauss’s (and Germany’s) swaggering ambition in the decades after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.
In performance, it demands a wicked, and not particularly subtle, sense of humour. The work begins and ends with quiet solos on the timpani and a considerable part of the pianist’s role in between is to tame that instrument’s exuberance. At a particularly obstreperous moment around the recapitulation, pianist Andrea Lam coaxed it back into polite society with quiet voice and soothing insistence. Elsewhere, Lam played with confident brilliance and bravura.” [4 STARS]
– Peter McCallum, The Age, September 2025
“Burleske, that fiendishly difficult work for solo piano and orchestra, followed, performed with admirable ease and safe technique by Andrea Lam. …her chromatic octaves cascaded with absolute control and her solos radiated with loving nuances of rubato. This performance was not “farcical” in the least (as a translation of the title would suggest), but more often gentle and thoughtful, incorporating waltz-like melodies with the influences of some of the composers the young Strauss admired, including Brahms and Liszt.” [4 STARS]
– BachTrack, September 2025
“The Burleske with its piano pyrotechnics was a perfect vehicle for Andrea Lam to display her astonishing piano prowess. Speedy riffs dispatched with ease were balanced with her superb handling of phrases dripping with sentimentality and all the time her playing was elegant… In this performance there was clearly a lovefest between Lam and Young and the audience, and that is great for live music.”
– ClassikOn, September 2025