The Cleveland Orchestra: Esa-Pekka Salonen & Yunchan Lim - Liszt

The Cleveland Orchestra: Esa-Pekka Salonen & Yunchan Lim - Liszt at Severance Music Center

Yunchan Lim can make a fast passage feel impossibly precise and a quiet one feel intensely personal. Put that gift into Rachmaninoff's Fourth Piano Concerto, with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting, and the performance becomes a reason to pay attention to every note.

At Severance Music Center, the program moves from Salonen’s NYX to Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 4 and then into Berlioz’s Suite from Roméo et Juliette. That means color, contrast, and a lot of musical motion — the kind of sequence that keeps the ear engaged because each piece opens a different world. The Cleveland Orchestra’s own description of Lim’s Rachmaninoff points to the concerto’s virtuosic demands and lush melodic writing, exactly the sort of material that can make a live performance feel electric.

For fans of serious piano playing, this is a date that rewards attention. For Cleveland listeners, it is also a chance to hear a program built around formidable concertos and a composer-conductor who brings his own voice to the podium.

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Hear Lim make the concerto his own in Cleveland. See The Cleveland Orchestra: Esa-Pekka Salonen & Yunchan Lim - Liszt ticket options.