An upcoming concert at Wesley Music Centre combines Samuel Barber and Franz Schubert with Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart in an exploration of perspectives of solitude.

Soprano Susannah Lawergren says "the idea for Songs of Solitude started from a love for those achingly beautiful spare and still pieces of music, often with a Scandinavian flavour, that pierce straight through a certain kind of heart (I have Swedish in my blood after all!)".

Lawergren is a frequent visitor to Canberra through her work with The Song Company and Opera Australia. She is no stranger to diverse repertoire, working both with Bach Akademie Australia and emerging composers such as Sydney-based Tristan Coelho.

She will be joined by Benjamin Burton, a busy young pianist quickly establishing himself as one of the go-to accompanists in the Sydney area. Burton trained in both Sydney and Munich, and in 2016 won second prize at the Mietta Song Competition, one of the most prestigious art song competitions in the country.

"The joy of going to Art Song Canberra concerts is in being transported through often wildly different personal and cultural journeys," Lawergren says. Relishing the opportunity to "let our hair down and do something that we really love", she has selected a program that ranges from art song classics through an exploration of her own Swedish heritage, with some classic jazz standards thrown in for good measure.

The evening's program will provide a range of different takes on the theme of solitude, and, as Lawergren says, "all these solitary threads will weave together to form a rich tapestry of human life".

The duo aim to build a complex web of themes and ideas about being alone, ranging from "the beauty of solitude, to the harshness of rejection, to the wild freedom of being the outsider beholden to no one", according to Lawergren.

Among the more traditional art songs on the program are Barber's The Desire for Hermitage and The Monk and his Cat, taken from his cycle of Hermit Songs, a collection of anonymous poems written by Irish monks/scholars between the eighth and 13th centuries. Here the individual revels in solitude, finding happiness and fulfilment in his books, and the amusing antics of a furry companion.

In Edvard Grieg's Solveig's Song (from Peer Gynt) the passage of time is of no consequence to the isolated lover, convinced of the certainty of a reunion with the one that got away.

Schubert's Der Leiermann continues the solitary theme through the allegory of the lonely hurdy-gurdy man, a busker who continues to play, though no one seems to care.

This coldness and apathy is seen again in a romantic setting in Schubert's Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel. Here we find the narrator alone and trapped by her all-consuming love for the man just out of reach. For all her hopes and dreams she is doomed to spin alone, praying for just one kiss.

Lawergren is well aware that "a whole program of still, solitary pieces might be a bit too much of a good thing".

The second half of the program will see her transform into a bold and brash "straight-talking Broadway broad", with bolshie characters who aren't afraid to get up close and personal with the audience. In Rodgers and Hart's The Lady is a Tramp we see a strong independent woman who knows what she wants and how to get it. Lawergren warns us, "Yes, this concert will get a little hot under the collar at times too!"