Even among the more curious singles released in the early ’90s – Detachable Penis by King Missile, and anything by Cake or Ween – Beck Hansen’s breakthrough single Loser struck listeners as enticingly strange when it first appeared on Triple J playlists and the ABC’s Rage circa 1993.

Quickly dubbed the “slacker generation’s anthem”, its loose collision of loping hip-hop beats, stream-of-consciousness rap, Son House-style folk-blues guitar and Portastudio production values seemed to look backwards and forwards simultaneously.

But the youthful Beck was never really a slacker. Beneath the thrift-store image was a musician of formidable depth and eclecticism. And it didn’t come out of nowhere: what most of us Rage watchers didn’t know at the time was that Beck was the son of prolific arranger and Hollywood composer David Campbell.

On the back of that first single, Beck built a career that constantly shifted shape, from the sample-heavy Odelay to the funk of Midnite Vultures and the bruised melancholy of 2002’s Sea Change. This Sydney Opera House Concert Hall event – backed by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under conductor Nicholas Buc – leans heavily into the latter album’s lushly introspective mood.

Beck with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Photo © Daniel Boud

The album’s opening track, The Golden Age, immediately bathes the audience in ravishing orchestral textures. Though rich and complex, the arrangement (one of his dad’s) never overpowers, allowing Beck’s voice to sit at the emotional centre of the performance.

Beck’s regular band, arranged to the side of the stage, is perfectly integrated into the mix. Longtime collaborator Jason Falkner switches effortlessly between guitar and bass while supplying immaculate harmonies. Roger Manning (keyboards) and James McAlister bring vintage-sounding colours and rhythmic flexibility to the arrangements. As a result, the evening feels like a fully matured artistic collaboration rather than a “rock star with orchestra” novelty – a form Beck ruefully admits he never expected to venture into let alone embrace.

Highlights? Hard to say. It is a beautifully consistent presentation, but Wave is among the concert’s finest moments. As the final notes fade on this occasion, an audience member shouts, “Oh my God, that was amazing!” – a spontaneous reaction that sums up the performance’s impact perfectly.

Beck with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Photo © Daniel Boud

The concert also features exquisitely judged covers, including It’s Raining Today by Scott Walker and Everybody’s Got to Learn Sometime by The Korgis. A brand-new song, Ride Lonesome, sits seamlessly beside the Sea Change material.

Melancholy is not the evening’s only colour. Tropicalia, from 1998’s Mutations, arrives in lush, Brazilian-inspired waves, while The New Pollution and Where It’s At provoke uncontained wriggling from a seated audience largely composed of suited-up Gen X professionals who look as though they have come directly from the office for the 7pm start. Some resorted to donning merch-stand T-shirts over their business attire – not a great look, it has to be said.

Beck with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Photo © Daniel Boud

After around 70 minutes, the orchestra leaves the stage and Beck shifts gears. Roaming the space, fiddling with percussion and casually playing slide-blues guitar, he briefly returns to the offbeat wanderer persona of his early years before the band launches into a rowdy encore of the early cuts Devils Haircut and Mixed Bizness.

It ends with Loser, which is both fun and abundantly weird with the audience of well-heeled professionals singing, “I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me?”

Beck with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra is in the Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House, on 8 and 9 May.