Why was Yunchan Lim’s Rachmaninoff 3rd Concerto So Impressive?

While I’m not a musician, I had a musical upbringing. I learned piano at a young age, and then took up violin soon after. Along with my sister, the two of us played in orchestras from middle school onward, and logged countless hours in recitals and performances.

The kicker for me: I never loved it. I wa pretty good at violin (I was concertmaster during my Senior year in high school), but I didn’t have the passion for it. Classical music put me to sleep. I had some decent technical skill, just not the heart.

As an adult, I still don’t tend to tip into the Classical Music water very much. But one thing I do really enjoy is listening to folks talk about music, and music theory.

I saw this post on MetaFilter referencing Yunchan Lim, an 18 year old pianist from South Korea and his gold medal win at the Van Cliburn International Piano competition.

In this video, Ben Laude breaks down Lim’s performance and explores why it was such a big deal. I have to confess – I would be hard pressed to explain how one judges or evaluates the performance of a classical piece, and was intrigued.

It’s a long video, but I got so interested… I ended up watching the whole thing.

And for those interested to hear the performance in full:

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