When Yunchan Lim walks through the backstage door, he strides towards the piano, surrounded by a bluish halo. Waiting for the audience to fall completely silent, the young prodigy enters into the intimacy of …round and velvety-smooth blend… composed by his compatriot Hanurij Lee. The balance is perfect, the bass extremely powerful, everything resonates in echoes – sometimes very long echoes – and the tension mounts, in an environment suspended above the ground. After a quick exit from the stage, Yunchan Lim returns, waits once more, even longer, and launches into the Aria. Thought through from start to finish, incredibly refined, the phrases link and intertwine in a very clear polyphony, but the most impressive thing is the commitment. From one aria to the next, Yunchan Lim never wavers from this total commitment, resolutely romantic, in a dynamic of insane breadth. Each phrase is a world in itself. The colours are matched only by the contrasts, of truly mind-boggling diversity. Lim dares, asserts and finds entirely new paths, characterising each variation to the limit. The legato is as subtle as the trills and ornaments, which are very present, intermingling in sound planes of great complementarity. Yet this is a far cry from convention, even from the marked differentiation of sound planes. Above all, Lim’s approach is extremely fluid, very flexible – sometimes too flexible, perhaps – constantly varying the sonic climates, switching and even juggling between registers. There’s nothing abstract about the Goldbergs here; each one seems to open up a new vision, turning perspective on its head. Lim seems to rely constantly on upward movements, building tension and momentum in a race that never seems to end – so when it does slow down, you gasp. You can see great smiles on his face, which nevertheless shows great concentration. Lim’s sound is much duller than that of many of his contemporaries, and the phrases retain their out-of-this-world dimension, with a material power and an assertive vital energy. It’s a corporeal, physical interpretation, all in relief. The imagination is not left out either, as in Variations Nos. 5, 10 and 12. On the other hand, it’s absolutely jubilant, as in Variations Nos. 1 and 23. It’s when the more reflective and spiritual variations come along that Lim finally seems to be caught out – perhaps a question of experience, that said I’m writing this when I’m no more than six months older than he is! Lim deconstructs to reconfigure, to imagine a new path, but is it still the Goldbergs? Is it even still Bach? The pianist even seems to tense up at times in Variations Nos. 25 and 26, which tend almost towards Schoenberg – but perhaps this impression is also due to this particular evening, as the version available on YouTube seems so profound, without being at all smooth. Strangely enough, the coherence is even more compromised when Lim throws himself wholeheartedly into the last three variations, with total physical commitment and a wildly expressive power and energy, supported by immense finesse in both approach and execution. We have this feeling of an elevation that sweeps everything away, continuing to rise in intensity and emotion – a passage in itself absolutely fabulous, and what a sense of rubato, we have the impression of climbing a mountain of colours in extraordinary freedom! One regret is the – very – ill-educated audience, who deprive us of much of the pleasure of the Aria da capo by applauding after Variation No.30 – absolutely criminal! In the end, it is the coherence that is perhaps a little missed – with transitions that are perhaps still lacking in naturalness too – but we must salute the incredible prowess, the audacity – and perhaps a touch of pride, but in my opinion this cannot be reproached – of a young twenty-one year old pianist, tackling an almost unequalled summit of keyboard literature, and proposing a resolutely new approach, inspired no doubt by the masters of the past – as Yunchan Lim himself often confides, explaining that he is inspired by Sofronitsky, Cortot or Friedman, which is far from common – but above all emerging straight from a phenomenal faculty of imagination. We can’t wait for next year!