Review of piano recital by Hyun-Jung Lim in Perth Concert Hall

Oct 21 2011 Perthshire Advertiser Friday

THE figure of Hyun-Jung Lim coming out to the piano in Perth Concert Hall for her British debut recital was a striking one: swathes of shimmering black silk and capacious sleeves and waist length lustrous black hair. Alas, this was the best impression she created all evening.

Her programme was made up of impressive works by composers who had also been impressive pianist, or who had created a new way of writing for the piano. However, she treated them all in the same way: they were played as fast and as loud as possible, relentlessly. It was all very brilliant, but on occasions what seemed to be enviably, technically dextrous piano playing would run into gabbling.

Her playing also relied on the tunes in a work, rather than an appreciation of structure. And she treated these melodies by the most disparate composers always in the same way: a little like putting them in brackets there was a little hesitation, then a few notes before she reached what she considered the point of the melody where she would linger, then rush to the end.

She started with the great Mozart Sonata in C, K330. From her performance no-one could have guessed that the opening movement is headed Allegro moderato. The performance was more HJ Lim than Mozart.

Chopin’s Four Ballades followed. She would emphasize bizarre details, sometimes making them into counter themes. In the second she physically jumped on the contrast between soft and super loud. She briefly left the platform after the second, but came back even more willful. The fourth had several passages almost unrecognizable as coming from this work.

She thundered through the opening of Rachmaninov’s Second Sonata, yet when she came to Rachmaninov’s aching, arching, gorgeous second theme she broke this up into limping bits. Though the return of this theme at the end of the second movement was done beautifully, for once simplicity being allowed. She rattled through Rachmaninov’s third movement, with a devastatingly impressive storm of double octaves just before the final notes.

Debussy’s Poissons d’or was again fast and loud, but it was his L’isle joyeuse which survived best in the evening. Ravel’s La valse started too loud and too clear. It has garish aspects, which turned out well, but she drove roughshod over the rhythm and feeling of the final pages. She needs to play what the composers wrote!

Ian Stuart-Hunter