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Decca4
Rachmaninoff had large hands and enormous fingers. He wrote concertos for himself to play. The third, in D minor, had its US premieres in Carnegie Hall with Walter Damrosch conducting the first run, Gustav Mahler the next. The concerto proved conspicuously more difficult than its predecessors to achieve with precision. A fear factor set in among lesser pianists.
Rachmaninoff, though, was a generous man, quick to acknowledge when others played better than he did. He preferred Vladimir Horowitz’s recording of the D minor concerto to his own. Others who imprinted their take in the work down the ages include Emil Gilels, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Evgeny Kissin, Martha Argerich, Stephen Hough, the eccentric Australian David Helfgott, Lang Lang and Yuja Wang.
And now we have Yunchan Lim, from South Korea. Yunchan burst to attention, aged 18, at the 2022 Van Cliburn Competition when the conductor Marion Alsop was seen on video with tears in her eyes as he approached the end. This is the audio release, devoid of emotional distractions.
I am impressed at how subdued Yunchan sounds at the opening and how, from that cautious start, he builds a gripping narrative. The slow movement shows comparable restraint, a denial of easy listening. Only in the finale does the soloist let rip, daring the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra to keep up. I caught a couple of rough patches in the accompaniment but not enough to disturb my enjoyment.
The sheer fearlessness of Yunchan’s playing is wondrous to behold and the way he shades the moods is altogether individual. This may not match the diabolism of Horowitz or Ashkenazy, but it’s a performance every Rachmaninoff lover must own. We are privileged to witness the birth of a star.
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