Chopin
Études, Opp 10 & 25
Yunchan Lim (piano)
Decca 487 0122 57 mins
Hiding behind a curiously dark cover is the dazzling pianism of Yunchan Lim’s studio debut. Aged just 18 when he won the Van Cliburn Competition in 2022, the South Korean pianist has lost no time in making another big statement with this release of the complete Chopin Études. Some extremely daring speeds guarantee excitement, pushing the technical limits in what are, of course, despite their generic title (Études, or Studies), so much more than technical exercises, yet he also finds great poetry. A feeling for the transitions from one piece to another suggests that he is aware of them collectively, not as individual miniatures. And though he clearly knows all about this music’s greatest interpreters, he doesn’t mimic them.
Indeed, the imagery he suggests in the liner notes is original and maybe sometimes fanciful. Conjuring up ‘the world’s tiniest moth’ in Op. 10 No. 2 is uncontroversial, but connecting Op. 10 No. 12 to the rage of the Greeks over the abduction of Helen changes the usual ‘Revolutionary’ slant. He plays the final pieces of Op. 25 as he describes them: ‘songs heading towards the end of the world’.
Yunchan Lim is not the only exciting young competition winner to have recorded the Études early on — Maurizio Pollini was also 18 when he hot-footed it from Warsaw’s 1960 Chopin Competition to the recording studio for the Études (now on Testament). Next to Pollini’s classical restraint, some of Yunchan Lim’s interpretations may be too subjective for everyone’s taste, yet this is a remarkable feat that demands to be heard. John Allison