Yunchan Lim at Disney

A heady week for keyboard Bach at Disney Hall: four days after Paul Jacobs’s stupendous traversal of Kunst der Fuge, Yunchan Lim delivered his formidable account of the Goldbergs, which I also heard in La Jolla earlier in the year. On that occasion, I found Lim’s approach overbearing at times, especially in the sensitive acoustic of the Conrad, and his handling of the variations, swerving from the dreamy-otherworldly to the visceral-athletic, didn’t yield a fully coherent interpretation. Nonetheless, I was duly astonished. This time, Lim’s huge sound reverberated warmly in Disney, and the discontinuities concerned me less, particularly in the latter half. Still, he could learn something from Jacobs’s seamless integration of disparate modes and moods. He remains an uncommonly natural, instinctive musician, awe-inspiring virtuosity aside. His encore was the Arioso from BWV 1056 in the Cortot arrangement — a more fitting postlude than the Morricone morsel he offered at Geffen after the Bartók Third Concerto a few weeks back. What else is there to say? This young man is a pensive juggernaut.