Over at 3 Quarks Daily my colleague, Brooks Riley, has a nice article about the young Korean pianist, Yunchan Lim, “winner of the 2022 Van Cliburn competition at age 18, who electrified the classical music community with his performances of Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 3 and Liszt’s Transcendental Études.” She goes on to remark:
With Lim, there is a quantum leap that no one quite fathoms or even dares to believe. As conductor Marin Alsop described him to the New York Times, ‘He’s a musician way beyond his years. . .Technically, he’s phenomenal, and the colors and dynamics are phenomenal. He’s incredibly musical and seems like a very old soul. It’s really quite something.’
This “very old soul” resides in a shy, self-effacing young man of 20 who lives and breathes music to such an extent that his goal in life is to live on a mountain and play the piano all day long.
Lim started late, at age 7, but his trajectory to the top has been short and steep. Long before the Van Cliburn competition, he was recognized as a prodigy in his home country of South Korea. He still studies with pianist Minsoo Sohn.
I urge you to read the whole article as well as the discussion afterward, where Brooks and I talk about emotional expression, practice habits, and aesthetic response.
Here’s the extraordinary performance of Rach 3 that won him the Cliburn Competition:
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