Boston Classical Review

For many pianists, the musical, intellectual, and physical rigors of J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations are such that the music doesn’t require any programmatic assistance.

Yunchan Lim, however, isn’t one of them. For his Celebrity Series solo debut at Symphony Hall on Wednesday, the 21-year-old superstar chose to pair Bach’s titanic opus with a short commission from his Korean compatriot Hanurij Lee.

What did that whimsically titled number, …Round and velvety-smooth blend…, add to the evening’s proceedings?

Not much. True, the score’s study of contrasting musical types was clear enough. But its five-minutes of Berio-esque flourishes mainly served to warm up Lim’s fingers. What it was getting at expressively, what it had to do with the concert’s main event, and how the music related to its title remain anyone’s guess.

Once Lim turned his attention to Bach, the questions continued. The biggest one was what, exactly, was he after in this music?

Though they hail from the last decade of the composer’s life, the Goldbergs aren’t necessarily the domain of old, experienced hands: Glenn Gould’s first recording of the set, for instance, was taped when the Canadian pianist was just 22. While Gould later distanced himself from some of his youthful interpretive decisions, he at least approached the monument with a clear point of view. On Wednesday, Lim’s intentions were a bit harder to pin down.

That’s not to say that he was ever thrown by the Variations’ demands. The 2022 Van Cliburn Competition Gold Medalist is an electrifying pianist for whom vertiginous hand crossings and dense contrapuntal episodes hold no terrors. His execution of such passagework—and there’s lots of that in this score—was consistently gripping and exciting.

For focus and energy, his reading never lagged. Fast variations moved briskly. Lim brought a fleet, gossamer touch to No. 5; abandon to No. 14; and a fresh lilt to No. 26. If both iterations of the Aria were a mite spacious, they were also lean-textured and floated dreamily. Inward moments could be touchingly spare, especially in No. 15 and the great Adagio (No. 25); the latter flowed with absorbing direction.

What Lim’s Goldbergs lacked was a convincing grasp of Bachian style and Baroque performance practice. Instead, he offered this music as seen and experienced through the subjective prism of the Romantics, particularly Liszt and Busoni. While that’s certainly a legitimate interpretive approach, it’s not one devoid of drawbacks and the virtuoso didn’t always successfully navigate around them: for instance, the extremes of volume and introspection with which he suffused his interpretation weren’t entirely convincing.

Neither was his heavy employment of the piano’s pedals. While the technique occasionally drew out mighty orchestral sonorities from Lim’s Steinway (No. 12 was intriguingly symphonic while No. 16 sounded aptly grand), an overreliance on the practice meant that textures periodically veered into a blur and tonal homogeneity marked a good bit of the night’s traversal. What’s more, the pianist’s intermittent observation of repeats—and general lack of embellishments when he did follow the indications—lent his account a haphazard sense of character.

What it did turn up were sometimes surprising anticipations of later composers. Who knew, for instance, that No. 23’s runs were so Beethovenian? Or that No. 25 could sound so much like stripped-down Chopin? Best of all was the Quodlibet, which unspooled like a not-too-distant relation of Album für Jugend. Yet while illuminating stylistic connections between different eras can be a worthwhile undertaking, on Wednesday the effort felt more like an abstract exercise that kept Lim from fully realizing the Goldberg’s deepest mysteries.

Nevertheless, the night’s performance, which concluded with an encore of Alfred Cortot’s arrangement of Bach’s Arioso from the Keyboard Concerto No. 5, revealed the young man as a hypnotic, brilliant work-in-progress. When Lim gets everything to fall into place—as surely he will—watch out.

The Celebrity Series presents baritone Matthias Goerne and pianist Daniil Trifonov singing and playing Schubert 8 p.m. Friday at Jordan Hall. celebrityseries.org

Posted in Performances

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One Response to “Lim’s romanticized “Goldbergs” brings mixed results in Boston recital debut”

1. Posted Oct 24, 2025 at 5:42 pm by Jenny

   I appreciate the reviewer’s detailed analysis, but I find his framework quite limiting. To judge Yunchan Lim’s Goldbergs mainly by Baroque performance standards feels reductive, especially when Lim’s interpretation clearly aims to reimagine the work through modern sonority and narrative scope.

   Bach was a visionary — if he lived today, I believe he would explore every color the modern piano offers. For me, Lim’s performance wasn’t a departure from Bach’s spirit, but an expansion of it.

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