Yunchan Lim’s first two discs for Decca – Chopin: Études Op 10 and Op 25, and Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No 3 – were understandably chosen to showcase the technical brilliance and musical intelligence that had made the Korean pianist such an exceptional winner of the 2022 Van Cliburn competition in Fort Worth, Texas. But now, it seems, Lim feels it is time to reveal a more expressive, intimate side to his playing, and indeed it’s hard to imagine anything more different from the Chopin and Rachmaninov than Tchaikovsky’s suite The Seasons.
Begun immediately after the premiere of Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto and composed in parallel with his ballet Swan Lake, the series of 12 miniatures that make up The Seasons were commissioned by a magazine, and published monthly through 1876. They were intended to be played by amateurs, and the technical demands most of them make are modest. But their charm and lyric beauty have made them a popular part of many concert pianists’ repertory, whether as encore pieces or played as a selection in a recital.
Each piece in the set has a descriptive title, appropriate to the time of year it illustrates: January is “By the Fireside”, March “Song of the Lark”, May “White Nights”, and so on. But in his sleeve notes, Lim offers his own provocative interpretation of the cycle. “Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons,” he claims, “depicts the final year in a person’s life.” What justification he might have for this assertion, apart from the composer’s generally jaundiced view of life, isn’t clear, and loading these often innocent miniatures with such a subtext seems wilfully obtuse. But perhaps Lim’s gloomy view of the work explains why his tempi for some of the pieces seem on the slow side, never quite to the point of sounding laboured, but certainly slow enough to give the music more gravitas than usual. Everything else about Lim’s playing is, as you would expect, exemplary, but several other pianists, most recently another major prize winner, Bruce Liu, present them in a less knowing, more guileless way.
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