The young South Korean pianist Yunchan Lim enters into rivalry with Maurizio Pollini (as an 18-year-old in 1960 for EMI and then 12 years later for DG), the young Vladimir Ashkenazy, Murray Perahia, Juana Zayas’s 1983 recording (Jed Distler’s Gramophone Collection choice for the Études) and, from before the Second World War, Alfred Cortot. Back in January 2012 Bryce Morrison referenced Pollini’s first recording as ‘a near flawless balance of sense and sensibility’ and one is tempted to ask, ‘How can you top that?’ My answer would be ‘never say never’, as James Bond might have put it. In May 2024 David Fanning metaphorically shook his head at the impossibility of choosing between ‘Olympian’ levels of excellence, and Lim almost clinches a choice for all time – and I say ‘almost’ only because for me the prospect of permanently closing the door on comparisons deadens the creative process.

Lim is his own player yet seems to have been nourished by the best on offer from his finest forebears – whether Pollini’s bronzed bravura, Zayas’s imagination or Cortot’s ‘speaking’ tone. More than that, he knows how to gauge the course from one étude to the next: the tempos of Op 10 Nos 9 and 10 are perfectly judged in relation to each other. And there’s the superhuman control of dynamics that can swirl this way or that, with never a break in the line. In the short term, I doubt that any other recording of the Études will deliver more: a magnificent achievement. Rob Cowan

The Recording

Chopin Études – Op 10; Op 25

Yunchan Lim pf

Decca (5/24)

Producer John Fraser

Engineer Philip Siney

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Runners-up

Liszt Études d’exécution transcendante, S139

Yunchan Lim pf

Steinway & Sons (9/23)

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Bartók, Janáček, Szymanowski

Piotr Anderszewski pf

Warner Classics (2/24)

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