JS Bach
Goldberg Variations ‘Live at Carnegie Hall’
Yunchan Lim (piano)
Decca 4871517 77 mins
That Yunchan Lim is a remarkable pianist is self-evident in everything he plays. But let’s hope he doesn’t pay too much heed to the hype his singular talent attracts.
Recorded live at Carnegie Hall last year, this set of the Goldberg Variations was dubbed ‘history in the making’, which seems a little extreme. And to discover that Lim has been pondering the Goldbergs all his life, I can’t help but draw a wry smile given that he was all of 21 at the time of the recording!
Over the top? Well yes, but perhaps only a little because this is a set that takes its seat confidently at the top table and, in places, is touched with genius. Underpinning Lim’s approach is a playfulness that animates even the most arcane examples of Bach’s compositional cunning. And with one important caveat, each variation is individually characterised yet never loses sight of Bach’s long-term strategy.
Insouciantly Variation 9 paves the way to the pugnacious Fughetta which follows; and while Variation 13 strays a little dangerously into whimsy, the hurtling virtuosity of Variation 14 gives whimsy short shrift. Some of the variations prove jaw-droppingly exhilarating, and the scuttling perpetuum mobile of Variation 5 is a scintillating white-knuckle ride, its vertiginous keyboard-hopping tossed off with a devil-may-care exuberance that also informs the hands-entangling Variation 20.
The minor key variations prove more problematic – especially the ‘Black Pearl’ (No. 25) which, for all its languorous tristesse, feels over-extended; its cousin No. 21 also drifts dreamily in and out of consciousness at times.
An idiosyncratic set then, but a revelatory one whose indulgences are a price worth paying for a flair-filled release that endlessly probes, illuminates and captivates.
Due to an error, this review was printed in our March issue as 5*. It is corrected here as 4*.
