The Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tüür expressly conceived Aditus as a curtain-raiser – what used to be known as a concert overture – and the piece served well enough as a preface to heroic Beethoven and early Bruckner, albeit scored with a percussive extravagance out of kilter with its companions. Built from nothing more complex than up-and-down scales, Aditus is an impassive lump of sonic quartz and granite, and Paavo Järvi directed it with punchy assurance – as well he might, having recorded it back in 2002.
As the 18-year-old winner of the 2022 Van Cliburn Competition, going on to fulfil high hopes with a Decca debut album of Chopin Études, Yunchan Lim cuts an unassuming figure at the piano, and the “Emperor” Concerto numbers among the least showy and most symphonically integrated of such works. To judge from my journey up Exhibition Road and the pop star reception accorded to the entry of the pianist, a sizeable number of London’s Korean community had turned out to cheer on their hero.
If they entertained hopes of a dazzling showcase for Lim’s virtuosity, they would have been disappointed. Playing against expectation in this way made his musicianship all the more impressive. It took until his first extended solo for the performance to find a centre of gravity. Lim sustained both tension and a Classical pulse for the first movement even through its lyric stretches: this was an “Emperor” of imperious technical command but hardly imperial grandeur, with its eye firmly fixed on a rhetorical mode of expression appropriate to 1811, not 1911.
Another remarkable aspect of Lim’s pianism was his respect for the quiet dynamics of the score. Aided by some responsive listening from the capacity audience – which had blessedly refrained from breaking the hush at the end of the first movement – he and Järvi phrased the Adagio as a simple, heartfelt prayer. Perhaps the rubato and leggerissimo touch belonged more naturally to a Chopin nocturne than to Beethoven, but it felt true in the moment, not least thanks to some attentive give and take between soloist and orchestra.
The conductor had even more to contribute in the finale, with a bassoon pedal springing into unusual prominence and the timpani tattoo in the final bars underlining the alla marcia quality of the movement as a whole. Even the encore – Wilhelm Kempff’s transcription of a Bach siciliano – projected humility as well as maturity. Rather than basking in the ovation, Lim simply got up and left the stage.
Whereas most of Bruckner’s later symphonies take their cue from the mystic hush which opens Beethoven’s Ninth, the First was conceived at a time when Bruckner was new in Vienna and had never heard the Ninth live. Järvi bore this in mind in his performance, though he soon wisely pulled back from attempting some kind of world-record dash through the piece. It is now a commonplace to observe a Schubertian heritage in this music, but Bruckner’s rhythmic games are a mark of his sophisticated individuality as a symphonist, and Järvi led this First as if with the whole, evolving personality in view. Perhaps one or two transitions in the outer movements could have been more sensitively rounded off, but there was no lack of finesse or athletic sinew to the BBCSO’s playing, and Jarvi projected the First as a formidable demonstration of symphonic intent; the soul-searching could be left for later.
