Czech Philharmonic | Semyon Bychkov | Yunchan Lim | Smetana | Ravel | Dvořák

When 18-year-old Yunchan Lim won the 2022 Van Cliburn Competition with Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto, conductor Marin Alsop had tears in her eyes. The jury was no less moved by what they had just heard. Here was someone who simply played differently: powerful and tender, mature and electrifying at the same time, as juror Stephen Hough put it. His colleague Jean-Efflam Bavouzet admitted in astonishment: “I was simply speechless.” The young Korean’s career took off like a rocket afterward — despite the fact that he avoids all showmanship and lives solely for the music, like a priest for God. He now makes his Lucerne Festival debut with Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major, a work that shifts between Basque folk color and Mozartian elegance. It promises to be an event. The Czech Philharmonic will partner with him and bookend his appearance with two signature works from their homeland. Chief Conductor Semyon Bychkov will open the evening with the quintessential Czech classic, Bedřich Smetana’s world-famous Vltava. And after intermission comes Antonín Dvořák’s Seventh Symphony, arguably his most heroic.

Performers:
Czech Philharmonic
Semyon Bychkov, conductor
Yunchan Lim, piano

Program:
18.30 Introduction to the Concert with Susanne Stähr (KKL Luzern, Auditorium, in German)

Bedřich Smetana (1824–1884)
Vltava

Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
Piano Concerto in G major

Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904)
Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70

Intermission at c. 20.20