Yunchan Lim: 19-year-old piano sensation signs record deal

A 19-year-old pianist who has been called "classical music's answer to K-pop" has signed an exclusive deal with the UK's Decca Records.

Yunchan Lim stunned the music world last year when he became the youngest ever winner of the prestigious Van Cliburn Piano Competition in Texas.

His performance of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 has since been watched more than 12 million times on YouTube.

Decca snapped up the musician after a prolonged bidding war.

Yunchan was courted by record company executives in Tokyo, Paris, Amsterdam, Rome, London, New York and Seoul before he finally decided to sign with the 94-year-old British label.

"Decca has produced records with excellent sound quality, and has worked with numerous legendary musicians," he said in a statement.

"It's a record label that one can truly appreciate as a musician."

Seemingly arriving from nowhere, the teenager's performances have been described as "visceral", "magnetic" and "poetic". His blazing rendition of Rachmaninoff's concerto in Texas moved conductor Marin Alsop to tears.

"A slight, unsmiling, rather otherworldly lad, Lim seems not just at one with his piano, but positively in love with it," wrote the Independent's Jessica Duchen, reviewing his British debut at the Wigmore Hall last January.

"His playing is so good you think you're dreaming."

"Yunchan plays the notes - all of them - as pathways to a surreal elsewhere," agreed Norman Lebrecht in The Critic. The New York Times praised how his interpretation of Rachmaninoff moved from "quietly, calmly penetrating lucidity" to "pinging intensity".

"By the end of the piece, his upper body was jack-knifing toward the keys at flourishes, with his left foot stomping," wrote Zacharay Wolf.

Yunchan was born in Siheung, South Korea in 2004 and credits his love of the piano to the recordings of Chopin and Liszt his mother played when he was young.

He started piano lessons when he was seven and entered the Music Academy of Seoul Arts Center [sic] a year later.

"I immediately noticed that he was a huge talent," his teacher once told the New York Times. "He's very humble."

Since winning the Van Cilburn competition, he has issued two recordings - one of Liszt's fiendishly difficult Transcendental Études, recorded at the contest's semi-finals, and a live performance of Beethoven's Emperor concerto with the Gwangju Symphony Orchestra.

The latter, released by Universal Music Korea, went platinum within hours in his home country.

His first studio recording will be released by Decca in spring 2024.

In a statement, the label's co-president Tom Lewis said: "Yunchan is, quite simply, the most exciting new classical artist on the planet. It took a global mission to secure his signature... and we are so excited that he chose us."