The Lim Yun-chan Craze — Let's Build at Least One Concert Hall by the River

[Hankook Ilbo · Opening the Morning · July 14, 2022]

Yun Suk-myung, Research Fellow at the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (KIHASA) and former President of the Korean Pension Association

My major is in the field of pensions. I have continued to write columns related to pensions. Nevertheless, as an exception this time, I have come to write about music and Lim Yun-chan. "Many things will happen around him in the future. There are still many areas that need to be filled. I hope he can maintain his integrity and demonstrate his own individuality regardless of any temptations." This is because the words of his teacher, Professor Son Min-soo, who mentioned Maurizio Pollini—who disappeared for two years after winning the Chopin Competition before reappearing—touched my heart.

As soon as I encountered the news on the morning of last June 19 that a Korean pianist had won the 'Van Cliburn International Piano Competition,' I visited the competition website to listen to the performance. The final piece, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3, had no sound. After seeing a comment saying it could be heard if the volume was turned up as much as possible, I turned the volume to the maximum and could barely hear it. Even though it sounded very faint, I felt choked up several times.

Beyond the outstanding performance skills of the 18-year-old youth, I think it was because the competition venue was Fort Worth, Texas. During the days when I studied alone in loneliness, the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport was where my wife, who had come to see her husband during a short vacation, would return to Korea with our young child. This was because there was a direct flight to Seoul. The music I listened to while driving three hours back to school after sending her off to Seoul was Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto. Seeing such outstanding talent displayed in that very place brought back special emotions.

"I do not think there is anyone who plays the piano as hard as he does. To live his life at his own tempo, he needs time to build his own world while minimizing performance activities. Good music can emerge when one is considerate of others but believes in and develops their own thoughts independently. I hope he can be given time for the music to come alive from within by looking further ahead." These are the remarks of his teacher, Professor Son Min-soo. This is likely because the two to three years of an 18-year-old youth is a period when explosive growth, incomparable to other age groups, is possible.

Before writing this column, I listened to recordings of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 again. Starting with Van Cliburn's live recording at Carnegie Hall, and continuing through Mikhail Rudy with the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mariss Jansons, Martha Argerich with Riccardo Chailly, Vladimir Ashkenazy with Kirill Kondrashin, Earl Wild with Jascha Horenstein, Lazar Berman with Claudio Abbado, Alexis Weissenberg with Georges Prêtre, Zoltán Kocsis with Edo de Waart, and Emil Gilels' 1949 Melodiya recording with Kondrashin.

These were the thoughts I had while listening to these recordings. Beyond personal preference, I want to hear a performance with Lim Yun-chan's own individuality that can soothe the souls of classical music fans in both the East and West. I mean a performance that can remain as a heritage of human culture, accompanied by world-class orchestras and conductors. To this end, I hope our society can protect him from the numerous external temptations during his period of explosive growth. As Lim Yun-chan himself said, so that he can find his own individuality through constant dialogue with the composer via the score, rather than imitating reference performances.

Instead, I hope the current craze can be utilized as energy to build a few independent, dedicated concert halls with good acoustics—even if modest in scale—to properly promote the advantages of Seoul as a waterfront city to the world. This is because I want to see Lim Yun-chan performing in a concert hall that fully showcases our individuality, similar to the waterfront facilities of Oslo, the Sydney Opera House, and the Lucerne Culture and Convention Centre, even if they are not large in scale.

Source: Hankook Ilbo (original article)