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With the explosion of keyboard talent and major piano competitions today, winners all too easily blur into one another. But Yunchan Lim manages to stand out.
Not only did the Korean pianist become the youngest entrant ever to win the prestigious Van Cliburn International Piano Competition last year, his towering technique and insightful artistry grabbed the attention of critics and everyday listeners alike. The New York Times called his take on Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in the finals as one of the top 10 classical performances of 2022; a YouTube video of his playing amassed 10 million views alone in the first eight months after the contest.
Marin Alsop, who conducted the Van Cliburn finals with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and served as the jury chair, reportedly was wiping away tears after the performance. “He’s really amazing,” she said of Lim. “He’s not only a phenomenal technician but he’s also a real poet. And 19 years old — 18 when I first worked with him — it’s pretty formidable. Even the other [Van Cliburn] pianists were like ‘wow.’ ”
Alsop and Lim will be reunited Aug. 5 at the Ravinia Festival when she leads him and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a reprise of their powerful pairing on Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3. (Also on the program are Augusta Read Thomas’ Sun Dance (In memoriam Oliver Knussen) and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 (Eroica). “Maestro Marin Alsop is a person who shivers my heart and soul and delivers something really warm to mankind in the world. I also felt such beautiful live music in a few performances with her [at the Cliburn competition],” he said in an email interview translated from Korean.
“I knew it was like Russian roulette. It could turn out well, or you could end up [getting in your own] head. It was a lot of stress.” — Yunchan Lim on the Cliburn competition
Many pianists have put their stamp on Rachmaninov’s beloved if devilishly challenging Third Concerto, and Lim is clearly making it his calling card as well. He was also set to perform it July 26 with Alsop and the New York Philharmonic at the Bravo! Vail Music Festival in Colorado. Speaking with obvious exaggeration, Lim said that he has listened to recordings of the concerto “3,000 times,” citing in particular esteemed pianist Vladimir Horowitz as one of the work’s interpreters he prefers. “But I’m still touched by the deep nostalgia it gives me,” he said.
New York Times critic Zachary Woolfe heaped praise on Lim’s take on the familiar concerto after the soloist’s debut with the New York Philharmonic in May. “ ‘He plays like a dream,’ we say about musicians we like, meaning simply that they’re very good. But when I say that Yunchan Lim played like a dream, I mean something more literal. I mean that there was, in his performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3, the juxtaposition of precise clarity and expansive reverie; the vivid scenes and bursts of wit; the sense of contrasting yet organically developing moods; the endless and persuasive bendings of time—the qualities that tend to characterize nighttime wanderings of the mind,” Woolfe wrote.
Born in Siheung, Korea, a city of about a half-million inhabitants, Lim began piano lessons age 7, entering the Music Academy of the Seoul Arts Center a year later. “From the moment I touched the piano, I wanted to be a great musician, even though there was a lot of opposition and concern around me,” he said, apparently referring to parental concerns about making music a career. By the time he was 9, he was playing the “piano seriously,” and, four years later, he was accepted into the Korea National Institute for the Gifted in Arts, where he met Minsoo Sohn, who became his main teacher. Sohn, a prize-winning pianist in his own right, will join the faculty of the New England Conservatory in Boston — his alma mater — this fall and continue to mentor Lim there.
Before the Cliburn, Lim was already a seasoned competitor after participating in three earlier contests. In 2018, for example, he won second prize and the Chopin Special Award at the Cleveland International Piano Competition when he was just 14. That same year, he took part in the Cooper International Competition at the Oberlin College and Conservatory, winning both third and audience prizes and gaining an opportunity to perform in the finals with the Cleveland Orchestra.
That experience no doubt helped him, but it didn’t lessen the daunting challenge and pressure of the Van Cliburn. “I knew it was like Russian roulette,” he said of the competition in a New York Times interview. “It could turn out well, or you could end up [getting in your own] head. It was a lot of stress.”
After he won the gold medal, offers came flooding in from top orchestras like the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris and Tokyo Philharmonic. But the pianist, whom the New York Times describes as “shy, soft-spoken, and bookish,” seems unfazed by this explosion of attention. In a press conference after the contest, he said, “I made up my mind that I will live my life only for the sake of music, and I decided that I will give up everything for music. … I wanted my music to become deeper, and if that desire reached the audience, I’m satisfied.”
As for what’s ahead, Lim professes to have no grand ambitions. Indeed, he simply wants to continue what has brought him this far. “My future plan is to find new music and my most delicate songs in my heart every day. And I will continue to study music with my teacher Minsoo Sohn in Boston.”
The question will be whether he can maintain that humble, refreshingly untainted approach as he tries to meet the heavy weight of expectations on him and contend with the relentless demands of fame. All the evidence so far suggests he can.
This is an excerpt of an article originally published in Ravinia magazine. To read the full version, click here.
