GTMF chamber program features pianist Lam – JH News&Guide

Today’s chamber music concert will preview two artists whose work will be showcased during the weekend’s Grand Teton Festival Orchestra program.

Australian pianist Andrea Lam, who will solo on Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 with the orchestra and Sir Donald Runnicles, will join violinist David Coucheron and cellist Daniel Laufer to present Brahms’ Piano Trio in B Major.

Lam, a semifinalist in the 2009 Van Cliburn Competition, made her debut with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra when she was just 13 and has since appeared with leading orchestras and conductors in Australasia, Japan, China and the U.S. During her two decades in the United States, she earned degrees from Yale and the Manhattan School of Music and was the pianist for the Claremont Trio from 2010 to 2020. With her recent return to her home country, she has maintained a furious performance schedule, including playing Schumann’s Piano Concerto with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra with Runnicles at the podium.

“She is an enormous presence in Australia,” Runnicles said at the start of GTMF’s 64th season, “quite a star … and a gorgeous pianist.”

Brahms finished his Piano Trio No. 1 in 1854, when he was just 20 years old, though he published a revised version 35 years later with significant changes.

“It’s such a great piece,” Lam said, speaking from Australia. “I love coming back to it and finding different things, finding new things, learning more, deepening my relationship with it.”

Ahead of the Brahms, violinists Ling Ling Huang and Jeffrey Dyrda, violist Maria Semes, cellist Grace An and pianist Yvonne Chen will perform “Stone Trail” by Bulgarian-English composer Dobrinka Tabakova.

Tabakova told the News&Guide that she wrote the piece two years ago for a group of friends who in 2018 founded the Off the Beaten Path chamber music festival in Bulgaria.
“It was inspired by some ancient mosaics from my hometown [Plovdiv, Bulgaria] and the many cobbled streets in the old village.”

This weekend, the orchestra and Runnicles will perform Tabakova’s 2017 work “Orpheus’ Comet.”

Today’s program will open with Beethoven’s String Quartet in F minor (1810), with violinists Boson Mo and Annie Chen, violist Nathan Frantz and cellist Lukas Goodman. Nicknamed “Serioso,” the quartet falls on the cusp of his middle and late periods, a transition from his “heroic” phase to the deeply contemplative and philosophical approach that marked his last 17 years.

This is the penultimate concert in the season’s chamber music series, held at 7 p.m. Wednesdays at Walk Festival Hall. Tickets are $35, and $5 for students and children. For tickets and information, visit GTMF.org or call the box office at 307-733-1128.

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