Tackling Bach’s Goldberg Variations: A Rare and Remarkable Event
On April 23, 2025, Hill Auditorium will be the setting for an extraordinary musical moment as 21-year-old pianist Yunchan Lim returns to Ann Arbor to perform J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations. This will mark only the fifth time in UMS’s 146-year history that the Goldbergs have been presented — and the first by a pianist so early in his career.
For many pianists, the Goldberg Variations are a milestone to be approached with reverence and experience, often a crowning achievement rather than an early-career endeavor. UMS audiences have previously heard the work performed only four times: by Glenn Gould in 1959 (who was only 27 at the time!), William Doppmann in 1965, Murray Perahia in 2000, and András Schiff in 2013. Each brought insight and maturity to this intricate, deeply expressive piece.
Lim burst onto the international stage in 2022 when, at just 18, he became the youngest-ever winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Since then, he’s captivated audiences around the world with his technical brilliance, poetic touch, and fearless approach to repertoire.
The Goldberg Variations are both a technical tour de force and a spiritual journey: 30 variations built around a single, serene aria, woven into a structure of dazzling symmetry and emotional depth. As pianist András Schiff has reflected, “An aria with 30 variations—this is the most perfect architecture in music. And to return to the aria at the end, unchanged, after all that… it’s a spiritual experience.”
Lim, whose teacher Minsoo Sohn is himself a celebrated interpreter of the Goldberg Variations (and a former faculty member at Michigan State University), has spoken of his interest in the piece: “A huge universe of pianists have played this repertoire, and I have always wanted to become a fundamental musician like them, so I decided to follow their route. The etudes contain a range of expression that encompasses the groans of the earth, the regrets of elderly people, and love letters, and I could feel the freedom of longing within them. Even when I was not practicing them, their songs were still maturing in my mind.”
They require not only formidable technique but a sense of architecture, imagination, and patience — qualities usually associated with pianists decades into their careers.
And yet, Yunchan Lim seems undaunted.
Critics around the world are noting his bold choice, with The Guardian in London saying, “In the Korean musician’s first UK performance of the Goldberg Variations [at Wigmore Hall], his playing felt simultaneously spontaneous and impeccably thought through.” San Francisco Classical Voice praised the “fearless, uncompromising display of the pianist’s breathtaking musicianship…His playing radiated joy and spontaneity here, totally unencumbered by the rocky difficulties of the passagework.”
His performance in Hill Auditorium isn’t just bold — it’s historic. He joins a rare lineage of Goldberg interpreters on the UMS stage, not merely replicating their legacies, but beginning to write his own.
Be there to witness an extraordinary artist at a pivotal moment, taking on a work that has both humbled and inspired generations of pianists and their fans.
