Rachmaninov redux for Yunchan Lim and Marin Alsop in Baltimore

Two years ago, Yunchan Lim and Marin Alsop caught lightning in a bottle at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Under Alsop’s baton, Lim sailed to victory with a performance of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto no. 3 in D minor, becoming the youngest gold medalist in the event’s history. A video capture has been viewed on YouTube more than 14 million times, and Lim, not yet 21, now reliably sells out concert halls around the world. This week, he reunited with Alsop on her home turf – the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, where she served as music director for 14 years – to tackle the same composer’s Piano Concerto no. 2 in C minor.

From the beginning, there were indications that this wouldn’t be an ordinary concert. I don’t recall ever seeing a designated table in the lobby for leaving gifts for the soloist before, and I’ve never witnessed security guards positioned at the lip of the stage, lest an overzealous fan try and rush the artist. I also can’t remember the last time Joseph Meyerhoff Hall was filled to capacity for a weeknight event. (The performance on 25th April was added due to demand, after Friday evening and Sunday matinee concerts sold out.) Within moments of playing his first notes, though, it became startlingly clear that the enthusiastic response Lim engenders is no fluke: perhaps not since the early days of Yuja Wang has a young pianist arrived on the scene with such a perfect balance of polish and panache.

Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto may lack the bravura fireworks of the Third in some ways, but it is no less a virtuosic undertaking. It tests the soloist by demanding a strong balance of lyricism, wit and fire, sometimes all within the same phrase. Lim dispatched those challenges handily. He unleashed a rich and commanding sound in the Moderato that cut through the movement’s heavy string orchestration without sounding overly insistent. In a section where the composer seems to privilege the orchestra over the solo instrument, giving them most of the musical themes and denying a cadenza, Lim’s approach came across as bold and defiant, a distinct voice claiming his place in the musical narrative.

He successfully switched gears in the Adagio sostenuto, offering a familiar theme that sounded more poetic and introspective than usual. Lim reached a chamber-like level of intimacy in his duet with Assistant Principal Flute Christine Murphy, whose honeyed tone rang out irresistibly into the auditorium, and which laid the ground for a beautiful clarinet solo by Jaewon Kim. Lim didn’t just linger in the Romantic realm, though – he brought great humor to the movement’s staccato and arpeggiated notes, then barnstormed through the aggressive Allegro scherzando.

After multiple curtain calls, Lim offered a single encore: a beautifully shaped rendition of Felix Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, Op.85, no. 4. Judging from the audience’s reaction – applause that continued heartily well after the house lights came up – they would have welcomed other selections. But like any great artist, Lim knew to leave them wanting more.

Alsop smartly placed the Rachmaninov at the end of the program, intuiting perhaps a potential mass exodus at the interval if Lim appeared earlier in the evening. In her words, the first half of the concert celebrated “the American experience from two very different vantage points”. Carlos Simon’s AMEN! draws on the composer’s experience growing up as a minister’s son. He renders the jubilation of a church service through silvery chimes, bluesy trombones and zesty woodwinds. Although the piece grows repetitive as it wears on, Alsop and the BSO performed it heartily, leaving the listener hungry for more of Simon’s work in the future.

Charles Ives’s Symphony no. 2 was a rockier affair. The outer movements emerged too bombastic to fully appreciate the composer’s cleverness, and the orchestra often luxuriated in a gratuitousness that made Ives’s carefully selected quotations seem like kitsch. Despite a warm glow in the sound here and there, the overall performance never quite came together, although Principal Cello Dariusz Skoraczewski played the various solo passages for his instrument with distinction.