Pianist Yunchan Lim shot to international piano superstardom in the summer of 2022, when, at the age of eighteen, he became the youngest pianist to ever win a gold medal at the prestigious Van Cliburn Competition.
Ever since, he has been in high demand at concert halls around the world.
However, because of the intensity of his new fame, most of his appearances have been as a concerto soloist or solo recitalist.
And unlike some competitions, the Cliburn does not feature a round involving chamber music.
Yunchan Lim
Consequently, because of the structure of the competition that made him famous, Lim’s extreme youth, and the rapidity with which his career took off, we haven’t yet had the chance to hear Lim play much chamber music with his colleagues.
Fortunately, there are some online performances to enjoy!
Here are ten chamber music performances by Yunchan Lim.
Mendelssohn – Midsummer Night’s Dream for Two Pianos (1842–1843)
This performance of excerpts from the two-piano version of Felix Mendelssohn‘s Midsummer Night’s Dream was recorded in Seoul in May 2020.
Lim was sixteen years old during this performance.
His chamber music partner here is Yeol Eum Son, a pianist who won the silver medal at the 2009 Cliburn Competition.
Her most famous video online is her performance of Mozart‘s Piano Concerto No. 21 from the 2011 Tchaikovsky competition, which, as of the time of writing, has 30 million views! You can see that performance here.
Mozart – Piano Concerto No.21, K.467 / Yeol Eum Son
Nowadays, that video and Lim’s Rachmaninoff concerto from the Cliburn competition are two of the most popular piano concerto performances on the Internet.
It’s a treat to see two viral YouTube stars in one performance!
Brahms – FAE Sonata (1853)
In this performance, Yunchan Lim accompanies violinist Ji Won Song in Brahms’s contribution to what became known as the “FAE Sonata.”
In 1853, three composer friends – Robert Schumann, Albert Dietrich, and Johannes Brahms – wrote segments of a violin sonata as a gift for up-and-coming violinist Joseph Joachim.
Joachim’s personal motto at the time was “Frei aber einsam“, which means “Free but lonely.”
All three composers included combinations of the notes F-A-E in their contributions to the sonata, hence the work’s nickname.
The friends got Joachim to guess who had written each movement, and he guessed each time correctly.
Lim makes a striking, energetic contribution to this Brahms showpiece.
Brahms and Strauss Two Piano Recital
Yunchan Lim & Minsoo Sohn perform Brahm’s Sonata for Two Pianos at the 2025 Verbier Festival
Yunchan Lim and teacher Minsoo Sohn play Strauss, Rosenkavalier Suite at Verbier Festival 2025
Here Yunchan Lim and his teacher Minsoo Sohn play Brahms’s Sonata for Two Pianos (written in 1864) and Richard Strauss‘s Suite from Der Rosenkavalier arranged for two pianos (written in 1945).
In 2017, when Lim was 13, he won an audition to enter the Korean National Institute for the Gifted in Arts. There, he began his studies with Minsoo Sohn.
He has continued to follow Sohn across the world, even moving to the United States to attend the New England Conservatory of Music after Sohn accepted a position there.
It is an unalloyed joy to hear two great pianists who have been teacher and student for so long working together.
This dual recital was recorded at the prestigious Verbier Festival in 2025.
Dvořák – Piano Quintet No. 2 (1887)
Unfortunately, no video exists of this performance, but at least we have the audio!
The performers are Yunchan Lim on piano, Ji-Yoon Park and Aurore Doise on violin, Julien Dabonneville on viola, and Armance Quero on cello.
The performance took place in Paris in 2023, the year after Lim’s win at the Cliburn.
The music-making here is full of great beauty and indefatigable energy.
Rachmaninoff – Cello Sonata (1901)
This performance with cellist Jae-Min Han was recorded in January 2021, a couple of months before Lim’s seventeenth birthday.
It’s a fascinating opportunity to hear the 16-year-old Lim playing repertoire by Rachmaninoff, given that two years later, he would cement his Van Cliburn Competition win with his interpretation of the third concerto.
You can tell he has an affinity with the composer even at this early age; he seems completely at ease, and he and Han give a stunning performance together.
By the way, it’s worth noting that Jae-Min Han was only fifteen in this performance!
Prokofiev – Classical Symphony for Two Pianos (1916–1917)
Here’s another performance with pianist Yeol Eum Son. This performance dates from the summer of 2020, when Lim was sixteen.
They team up for a bubbly two piano interpretation of Prokofiev‘s first symphony, which works surprisingly well as a piano duet.
Piano arrangements of symphonies fell sharply out of favour during the twentieth century once recordings became accessible and popular.
However, at the time Prokofiev wrote this work, a piano arrangement would have been the way many people would have first heard it. It wasn’t until a few years later that orchestral recordings became widely available.
Given Lim’s fascination with pianists from Prokofiev’s generation, it might not be surprising to see him playing more symphony transcriptions in future.
Ravel – La Valse for Two Pianos (1919–1920)
For this 2021 performance, Lim joined forces with his teacher Minsoo Sohn to give a knockout performance of Ravel‘s two-piano arrangement of La Valse.
This performance was recorded when Lim was just seventeen years old. But despite his youth, he matches his teacher in coaxing kaleidoscopic colors from the piano in a work that, in its original instrumentation, is famous for its inventive orchestration.
The most frequently viewed portion of this performance is the jaw-droppingly virtuosic portion starting around 10:30. The pianos sound like they’re being disemboweled.
Shostakovich – Cello Sonata in D-minor (1934)
Here’s another performance with cellist Jae-Min Han from January 2021.
According to the YouTube heat map, the most frequently replayed portion of the video is the virtuosic, demonic dance of a scherzo that starts at 8:28.
It is astonishing to hear two players in their mid-teens tackling this heavy repertoire from the height of the Soviet Great Purge with so much respect and commitment.
Lutosławski – Variations on a Theme by Paganini (1941)
Unfortunately, there’s only audio of this performance – and not even great audio, at that – but it’s absolutely worth including, if only as a historical document.
It dates from December 2019, when Lim was fifteen years old. His recital partner was Ahin Kim.
The repertoire is a virtuosic piano transcription by Witold Lutosławski of Paganini‘s 24th Caprice for solo violin.
The person who uploaded this performance was none other than Yunchan Lim himself, doing so in April 2020, a few months after the concert.
It’s funny to think of great concert pianists maintaining their YouTube pages from their student days, but here we are!
Fazil Say – Dört Şehir (2012)
We haven’t heard Lim play much of the newer music yet, aside from the standard commissions of short pieces sometimes seen at piano competitions.
(For what it’s worth, he won the prize for best performance of the Van Cliburn’s newly commissioned work, Stephen Hough‘s “Fanfare Toccata.”)
This is a totally absorbing performance of composer Fazil Say‘s cello and piano piece “Dört Şehir.”
The title, translated into English, means “Four Cities” and paints a portrait of four Turkish cities.
Conclusion
For a pianist best known for his high-profile recital and concerto work, these chamber music performances offer a rare (and illuminating) glimpse into Yunchan Lim’s artistic development.
From two-piano collaborations with Yeol Eum Son and Minsoo Sohn, to emotionally intimate duos with cellist Jae-Min Han, to performances of larger ensemble chamber works like the Dvořák Quintet, each recording reveals a different facet of his multi-faceted musical personality.
Hopefully, as his career advances, he will have the chance to explore more chamber music. We’ll be listening when he does!
Until then, these ten performances offer a mesmerising window into both his virtuosity and versatility…and give promising hints of what’s to come.
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