Decca Classics announces the upcoming release of Yunchan Lim: Tchaikovsky – The Seasons, available from 22 August. Lim shares a deeply personal and thoughtful interpretation of one of Tchaikovsky’s most intimate piano works. Recorded live at the Yehudi Menuhin School in Surrey, Yunchan views the twelve pieces not merely as a set of months, but as a story portraying someone’s final year of life.
This follows the release of one of the most talked-about events in recent classical music. Yunchan Lim’s live performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 at the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, when he was just 18. The recording was praised by The Guardian, which wrote, “The prodigious South Korean talent won 2022’s Van Cliburn piano competition with this performance; his version deserves a place alongside Argerich and Rachmaninoff himself,” and added, “He is the real thing, a once-in-a-generation talent… it’s hard to believe that this is the performance of an 18-year-old.”
That recording, along with his debut studio album of Chopin Études, received wide critical acclaim. This year, the Études made headlines with three record-breaking wins at the BBC Music Magazine Awards.
To Lim, The Seasons tells the story of a life coming to its end. Each piece reflects a different moment or feeling, from sadness and quiet thought to joy, love and peace. The music begins with a man sitting by the fire, thinking about the past, and ends with a peaceful farewell.
In the 2023 to 2024 concert season, his live performances of the work received glowing reviews from both critics and audiences.
Diapason wrote, “The beauty and mastery over the piano contains something almost unreal… one would never have believed that The Seasons could produce such an effect on the audience.” Die Nieuwe Muze said, “Lim is a sincere musician who, once seated at the piano, becomes one with his instrument and plays the music because he experiences it that way and not otherwise.”
Lim says, “Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons shows the final year of a human’s life. The first piece, ‘By the Hearth,’ shows a fire slowly dying in the fireplace. It begins with a man who is lost in memories, feeling sadness for no clear reason. Then new experiences bring hope. Strong feelings and tears turn into daydreams as the smoke from a cigarette curls through the air. While crying, he falls asleep, pulled into forgotten memories and always hesitating at the edge of the past. But then he returns to the present, accepts everything, and as the bell rings, he closes the day that will never come again.”
The album artwork, created by Ho-yeon Choi and titled How Much Do the Petals Weigh?, reflects the feelings and questions at the heart of the music. It invites listeners to think about moments of beauty and struggle and to ask the quiet but powerful question: What keeps me alive?