London’s Koreans helped ensure a sold-out Royal Albert Hall for the Proms return of Yunchan Lim on Friday night, paired this time with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Kazuki Yamada. But Lim doesn’t just shift tickets. His huge social media following ensures waves of global attention for everything he does or that is written about him.
This Prom will achieve this for an unusual reason. Soon after Lim began Rachmaninov’s fourth piano concerto, a distant alarm started ringing in the Albert Hall. Red lights flashed high up. Yamada and Lim pressed on. At the end of the movement, Yamada left the podium and disappeared off-stage, leaving the musicians and audience uncertain. After about five minutes, though it felt longer, the red lights stopped, the alarm was silenced and Yamada returned, to applause and relief all round.
