Finding Genesis in Beethoven

Pianist Lucas Amory '24 talks about childhood, music and his upcoming featured performance with the HRO.

By Vicki Xu '23
OFA Staff Blogger

On any day you might find follow the sound of music from Winthrop’s Junior Common Room to find Lucas Amory ’24 sitting in front of the piano. Amory, winner of the 2022 Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra Concerto Competition, aims for three-to-five hours of practice a day, fitting that time into his schedule whenever he can. Aside from the JCR, he’ll also spend time practicing in the music building or the Horner Room of the Agassiz Theatre..

Amory will perform Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5: Emperor with the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra on Saturday, February 18. I sat down with the musician for a couple questions in advance of his HRO debut.

How did you come to piano and how/what made you stick with it?
I was born into a family of musicians. Both of my parents play the viola professionally, but my mother started on piano when she was young, so she used to play me before I went to bed as a child. From there, I went to an elementary school that had a special focus on music, so in addition to a regular curriculum, I would get two lessons a week, preliminary theory and ear-training work, chorus and dance. I stuck with it because I felt that it had become such an important part of my identity from the outset, in part because I was already in a musical family, but also in part because I was definitely an introvert who turned to music as a way to understand myself away from other people. I also don’t think I faced much pressure to practice that much when I was young, which allowed me to discover by myself how much I loved music. This was crucial in not facing doubts about my musicianship in middle and high school, and allowed me to find an honest mode of expression. At this point in my life, practice has become therapeutic as well as beneficial, and is a welcome and intimate relief from the daily grind of Harvard life.

Why Beethoven No. 5? What about the piece speaks to you, as either a pianist or a listener? 
My grandpa on my mother’s side loved music, and his dream job was to become a tenor, but he lacked the resources and circumstances to do so. Instead, he created his own TV series, featuring music by different Western classical composers with the video footage displaying important locations to the composers being talked about. The opening credits of each one of these 20 videos uses the first minute from Beethoven’s 5th Piano Concerto as its music. I came to associate this concerto with a sort of Genesis-like creation; the beginning of the concerto would play at the beginning of each of these videos during the beginning of my life. In that sense, the piece has always held special meaning for me, and I was delighted to begin working on it at the start of last summer. To describe what about it speaks to me, I think one has to look no further that the opening piano cadenza: It’s extraordinarily unique in the world of solo concerti, and the journey the pianist takes to make a harmonic trip from point A to B to C and back to A is simultaneously intricate and simple. The second movement also has this measure of childlike simplicity that mesmerizes the listener. It's hard to get your mind around the idea that something so honest can also be so beautiful.

What was your experience rehearsing with HRO? 
This will be my HRO debut, but I hope that I have plenty of opportunities later on in my career to play with them again. I've been to many of their concerts in the past, so to be able to share the Sanders Theatre stage with them is an opportunity that I'm immensely grateful for. Rehearsals have gone smoothly, and I have so much respect for everyone in the orchestra.

Any parting words about your artmaking and where you see yourself growing as a musician? 
This is a tricky question, and definitely not one I feel like I’ll ever be satisfied answering, because the process of being an artist and making meaningful art evolves and matures just as any person evolves and matures with time. I’m definitely most excited to explore conducting more within different settings: theater, opera, orchestral and more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Want to prepare for the concert? Listen here to Beethoven's Concerto No. 5 performed in an earlier HRO concert featuring pianist George Li '18. For tickets to the HRO concert on February 18, click here.