Yunchan Lim's Performance at Van Cliburn 2022
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched these performances by now.
To be honest, I was never someone deeply immersed in classical music—not in the past, and not even now.
But ever since I encountered this pianist’s performance, something in me began to shift.
Even when the pieces weren’t immediately moving or familiar to me, I found myself overcome with emotion, shedding tears more than once while listening to music I once thought inaccessible.
And I know—this emotion I feel is, in part, shaped by the visual stimulation of the videos, by the contagious admiration expressed by others, and even by my own self-image, swept up in that shared appreciation.
Yet despite all that, his playing—so natural and expressive, so clearly flawless even to someone like me—is undeniably extraordinary.
The power and passion, the response from the orchestra and the audience… it’s impossible not to recognize the greatness of these performances.
Many of the works he plays are among the most iconic by Rachmaninoff and Liszt—pieces I’m sure I’d heard before.
But I must’ve found them dull and never made it to the end. Unless it was Mozart, Haydn, or the like, I would often just skip past.
Late at night, I used to lose myself in the notes and markings pouring from FM classical radio.
Sometimes I’d pretend to conduct, or imagine myself as a soloist, moving the crowd to tears, bowing under thunderous applause.
I listened to Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos so many times I could almost recite them.
His music felt like a lavish feast prepared by the hands of a true master.
Beethoven’s works, so deeply intertwined with his own life struggles, were heavy and profound. That’s why I loved them.
He fought against fate, burning like fire in the storm—he was magnificent.
As I got older, I grew closer to Vivaldi. When I first discovered L’estro Armonico (Op. 3), I was utterly captivated.
Among the 12 concertos, Nos. 2, 6, 8, 10, and 11 especially breathed new life into my weary spirit, worn down by the demands of daily life.
After drifting away from classical music again, it was Yunchan Lim’s performance that brought me back—
and what I found was something altogether different from what I’d known before.
It was a gift.
One of his videos has over seven million views. Another, over two million.
That simply doesn’t happen with this kind of music.
And yet, strangely enough, the feelings people describe seem to echo my own.
In moments like this, I truly feel that some kind of collective consciousness exists in nature—and perhaps we are, all of us, part of one living organism.
It is a miraculous performance.
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