Pianist Yunchan Lim. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Music Box, September 29th, 2025

I invite you to discover a new album by South Korean pianist Yunchan Lim, released on August 22nd, 2025. Tchaikovsky's The Seasons - 12 miniatures inspired by the months of the year - are presented here in a superb interpretation by this 21-year-old pianist, who three years ago became the youngest pianist ever to win first prize at the prestigious Van Cliburn Competition in the United States, one of the most important competitions in the world.

Yunchan Lim is a new star on the firmament of the world's highest-level pianism - a pianist with exceptional technique, but above all, with a deeply personal and highly convincing way of making music. Before winning the Van Cliburn Competition, he studied in South Korea, and later in Boston, though still under the guidance of his Korean teacher. So far, he has performed on major stages across America, Europe, and Asia; he is an exclusive Decca artist, and his first album, released in 2024 and featuring the complete Chopin Études, received the Gramophone Magazine Award in the Pianocategory.

This second recital album by Yunchan Lim has already received enthusiastic reviews. "There is an instinctive quality to Lim's way of playing in these 12 pieces, the feeling that he knows and understands the music so well that he can give free rein to his natural affinity with Tchaikovsky's music," writes Presto Music.

Yunchan Lim takes tempi slow enough to give the music more weight than usual. Otherwise, everything about Lim's interpretation is, as you would expect, exemplary," notes The Guardian. And The Times concludes: "When a pianist has both the piano and the music under empathetic and complete control, surrendering to pleasure is always the best solution."

The Guardian columnist believes that Yunchan Lim offers a darker view than the usual one of Tchaikovsky's Seasons; I would add that I didn't feel the gloom, but rather the gravity that can come from reading the great Russian novels of the 19^th century. A gravity that also comes from the extraordinary maturity of this panist (21 years old) who offers us some of the most delicate and barely perceptible piano nuances I have ever listened to. And if you want to know the great pianists, first of all listen not to how fast or loud they can play, but how rarely and slowly, holding your breath.

Yunchan Lim is part of this already well-established generation of Asian pianists who are making their mark globally through their exceptional quality - not only technical but also artistic. You would have to look at the phenomenon with strong prejudice not to notice that from Asia, especially from South Korea, come young and remarkably well-prepared people who surprise and delight. Just like Seong-Jin Cho, who performed on August 31st, 2025, in Bucharest, ten years after winning first prize at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw, a moment that made him a global star. Now it is Yunchan Lim's turn. Remember this name - for when he will, hopefully, be invited to the Enescu Festival!