JS Bach’s Goldberg Variations is a work many pianists put on the back burner for years, waiting until they feel their interpretation has matured before showing it to the world. Not so for Yunchan Lim, who turned 21 a couple of weeks ago in between giving concerts of the Goldbergs in the US. Maturity and youth collided intriguingly in this hot-ticket performance, his first of the work in the UK.
He gave us the theme simply, if also relatively weightily, emphasising a few moments of left-hand countermelody, before springing into a first variation full of zingy trills. By Variation 5, the first real allegro, he was dazzling us, the notes rattling past but with all the internal phrasing crystal clear and none of the threads tangled. That early way of spotlighting fleeting left-hand phrases became an ongoing feature – as did a degree of playful licence, with some of the repeats played up or down an octave, sounding either music-box-like or grumbly.
