This year we celebrate the 150th anniversary of composer Sergei Rachmaninoff’s birth. It is also one year since Yunchan Lim became the youngest pianist ever to win the gold medal in the sixteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, held once every four years. Lim’s acclaimed performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra under the baton of conductor Marin Alsop, clinched his victory and was by all accounts a rare moment. Competitions serve as a barometer for stylistic and interpretive trends, in a similar way as literary, film, or art festivals. What happens in competitions should be scrutinized, and this essay takes the occasion of the first anniversary of Lim’s historic performance to do so.
Link: https://www.massreview.org/node/11405
PDF file: Hartley_Lim-Rachmaninoff-review_2023
Hartley, Kris. (2023). “Yunchan Lim and the Rachmaninoff Third.” The Massachusetts Review.