Yunchan Lim takes on the Goldberg Variations

I still cannot believe the pianist I saw at Wigmore Hall today is only 21 years old! Yunchan Lim took on Bach’s Goldberg Variations, a monumental piece in piano literature stigmatically branded with a “Touch but do not perform until mature” label in the classical world, with a confidence and assuredness such as I have not seen in many pianists.

I’m not sure why, but the Goldberg Variations seems to be a popular choice among the hottest pianists recently. I do find it interesting that audience members all around the world are happy to sit through a 90-minute long piece, but it is perhaps a way for the pianists to make their mark.

Opening the concert with a short piece— “…round and velvety-smooth blend…”—composed specifically for him by twenty-year-old Korean composer Hanurij Lee (twenty!), Yunchan sends a clear message: the youth are here to take over and they are to be taken seriously.

From the first note, Yunchan showed that he is able to capture his audience’s attention with anything he plays, not by flamboyant gestures but by the pure intensity and imagination of his sound.

And really it was his sound that really made me listen, at times in spite of myself.

Yunchan commanded the keyboard as if it was glued to his hands. He seemed to play almost as he fancied, at times highlighting this voice, at other times that one. The result was a Kaleidoscope of textures in the Bach such as I had not heard or thought possible before.

At times this came at the cost of phrases trailing off and breaking the structural integrity of the Variations, but always Yunchan “told” us he knew what he was doing, the rules he was breaking, the direction he was headed. Yunchan’s Goldberg Variations wasn’t a meditation on the profundity of life, but a youthful exploration of the sonic possibilities of the piano, and the joy that comes with being in total command of the keyboard.

While, having listened to his live recording of Liszt’s complete Transcendental Etudes at the 2022 Van Cliburn Competition, I am no stranger to Yunchan’s formidable technique, watching him perform live still felt like witnessing a miracle. Not a SINGLE note was out of place or smudged, so natural did his technique feel it was almost as if it would be difficult for him to make one single mistake, even when he took certain variations at unfathomably fast speeds.

Just as a cat can react faster than we can blink, so Yunchan seems to operate on a level only the microscopic detail of microphones can pick up. So pearly clear was his runs, and at such a speed, I couldn’t believe my ears.

Yunchan Lim’s interpretation of Bach’s Goldberg Variations is perhaps a touch too Romantic for my taste, with his spontaneous whims sometimes distorting the phrases already beautifully written into the music, but his licence to add octaves where it suited him, or transpose repeats up an octave (Horowitz much?), are all indicative of an artistic freedom and authority in a youthful pianist who is ready to take pianism in a new direction.

There were times when his personality came forth so strongly, a powerful force waiting to be unleashed, straining against the framework of the music or even the framework of the piano itself, that one is left breathless despite one’s own objections on grounds of taste.

If a performance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations is meant as a test of a pianist’s maturity, then Yunchan’s performance shows it can be more than that: it can be the playground of possibilities. With Yunchan, anything is possible.

For an encore, Yunchan played the bass line of the theme of the Aria with his left hand, which was perhaps just a bit too cheeky.

Article featured photo credits to Wigmore Hall.