REVIEW: Visiting London Symphony and Pianist Yunchan Lim Soar in Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto

Ken Herman
San Diego Story

February 23, 2025

It appears that in terms of classical music performance, San Diego is experiencing a seasonal Sergei Rachmaninoff deluge. Last weekend, with guest pianist Parker Van Ostrand the San Diego Symphony performed Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43. Friday at the Jacobs Music Center, the visiting London Symphony Orchestra offered Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18, with Yunchan Lim as soloist, and in two weeks the San Diego Symphony will return to the Jacobs to present Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, Op. 45.

If there is truth to the claim made by the sybaritic 1930s movie star Mae West that “Too much of a good thing is . . . wonderful,” we should all be thankful.

The 20-year-old Yunchan Lim gave a sensational account of the Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto on Friday, a surprise only to those who did not know that in 2022 Lim took top prize in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, the youngest person (at age 18!) ever to win that vaunted competition.

Lim and the London Symphony, under the incisive baton of the orchestra’s Chief Conductor Sir Antonio Pappano, brought explosive energy to the impassioned gestures of this late Romantic concerto without overlooking the ingratiating charms of its impressive array of contrasting cantabile airs.

From the Jacobs Music Center’s new Steinway, Lim coaxed a vibrant, burnished sonority, crowned with the panache of his dazzling cadenzas. His vigor was matched by elegant solos from the orchestra’s brass and woodwind sections.

Lim’s cheering adoring audience would not let him leave without an encore, and he obliged with Franz Liszt’s Sonetto 104 del Petrarca.

Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D Minor is a great choice for a touring orchestra to demonstrate its caliber. Nearly an hour long, it calls for a large orchestra with an expanded wind section; it is anchored in symphonic structure, yet it has the coloristic adventures of a tone poem. Pappano and his 100-member orchestra offered an exhilarating, well-considered account of Mahler’s 1889 opus.

This symphonic journey begins with the awe-inspiring depiction of an awakening summer morning and ends with cataclysmic lightning bolts that herald the exciting finale, Pappano chose bold pacing that kept the work in laudable focus throughout. Along the way we savored the lithe, polished sound of the orchestra’s string sections, the robust, brilliant fanfares of the trumpets and trombones, and the myriad lyrical melodies of the suave woodwinds. And, of course, the thrilling final chorale from the eight members of the horn section—standing as the composer instructed—bringing the symphony to its soaring conclusion.

This concert was presented by the La Jolla Music Society on February 21, 2025, at the Jacobs Music Center in downtown San Diego.