From the late 1970s, classical music performance increasingly distanced itself from Romanticism, shifting instead towards an emphasis on objectivity and interpretations faithful to the composer's original intentions. This gave rise to a new generation of piano virtuosos, including Maurizio Pollini, Alfred Brendel, András Schiff and Murray Perahia, whose styles became popular in their times. However, an overemphasis on rational analysis led less-accomplished performers to deliver cold, detached performances. Perhaps integrating the subjective sensibilities of Romanticism with objective interpretations established during the past half century is the way forward for contemporary music. The emergence of South Korean pianist Yunchan Lim coincided with this paradigm shift in performance styles, and he arrived as a fresh spark lighting up the classical stage.

Lim won the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2022, making him its youngest ever winner at just 18 years old. It was said that his performance in the final of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No 3 moved conductor Marin Alsop to tears. In a flash, his talent caught the attention of the classical world and a video of the performance has now received 18 million views on YouTube. The polish and perfection of his technique allow him to perform pieces such as Franz Liszt's Transcendental Études—works of such technical difficulty that many pianists don't even attempt them—with such ease and lightness that a relaxed smile shines from his face while he plays.

He performed two sets of Frederic Chopin's Études in his first studio recording, which left fans in amazement at his ability to objectively tackle the pieces' musical structure while remaining wholly imaginative and creative in his timbre, infusing the music with a long-lost sense of romance. Even with Bach, whose compositions require strict adherence to the rules, Lim handles his Three-Part Inventions and Goldberg Variations with magnificence, performing them with Baroque  charm while bringing forth a delicate contemporary air. Meanwhile, his most recently released The Seasons by Tchaikovsky is deeply romantic, bringing to life the essence of a different musical genre.