Piano Recital: Victor Lim Plays Beethoven, Mompou & Schumann

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We've had the pleasure of hearing Victor Lim here at Forsyth several times, both as a remarkable solo recitalist and as a sensitive and supportive accompanist for students of Rossall International Piano Academy, where he is both Head of Keyboard and Director.

So we guarantee another wonderful evening of music when he returns, not least because his programme includes the two composers with whom he has the greatest affinity, Beethoven and Schumann.

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For his Beethoven, Victor has already received two awards from the Beethoven Piano Society of Europe. This recital will begin with the composer's last major work for piano, the Bagatelles Op. 126, which he dedicated to his brother Nikolaus and considered "probably the best I've written" in the genre. Unlike the previous sets (Opp. 33 and 119), the six Bagatelles of Op. 126 were conceived not as individual miniatures but as a "cycle of little pieces" to be played together in sequence.

These are followed by Mompou's Scènes d'enfants (Scenes of Childhood), of which the three central 'Games' were written at the start of the First World War, while the outer movements, which feature a folk melody — La filla del marxant (The Merchant's Daughter) — from the composer's native Catalonia, were completed as the hostilities came to an end.

Finally, Victor will perform Schumann's Humoreske, the title of which might suggest a brief, light-hearted piece, but which is in fact a major work of wildly fluctuating emotions that the composer described as his "most melancholy composition". Written while his relationship with his future wife, Clara Wieck, was developing, the score includes a mysterious "inner voice" notated on an additional staff at the start of the second section, the meaning of which remains the subject of much unresolved speculation but which Clara explained was not be played aloud — rather, it was a hidden melody that the player would sense internally "as one often does when one's heart is full while playing".

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As usual, the concert will take place in the beautiful Piano Showroom here at Forsyth, where Victor may be seen in the excellent photographs by Abhishek Kodaganallur Pichumani shown on this page.

Having hosted scores (pun intended...) of free performances over the past few years, we are now introducing a small charge of £4 per ticket as a contribution towards the costs of running our recital series.

PROGRAMME

Ludwig van Beethoven

Bagatelles Op. 126

• No. 1 in G major
• No. 2 in G minor
• No. 3 in E-flat major
• No. 4 in B minor
• No. 5 in G major
• No. 6 in E-flat major

Federico Mompou

Scènes d'enfants (Scenes of Childhood)

• I. Cris dans la rue (Cries in the Street)
• II. Jeux sur la plage: Jeu 1 (Games on the beach: Game 1)
• III. Jeu 2 (Game 2)
• IV. Jeu 3 (Game 3)
• V. Jeunes filles au jardin (Young Girls in the Garden)

Robert Schumann

Humoreske in B-flat major Op. 20

• I. Einfach (Simple)
• II. Hastig (Hastily)
• III. Einfach und zart (Simple and delicate)
• IV. Innig (Heartfelt)
• V. Sehr lebhaft (Very lively)
• VI. Mit einigem Pomp (With some pomp)
• VII. Zum Beschluss (To the resolution)

VICTOR LIM

Described as a pianist "with great possibilities of nuance and perfect flexibility" (Revista Arta), South Korean-British pianist has performed around the world in the UK, France, Germany, Austria, Norway, Denmark, Romania, China, Singapore and South Korea. Victor is a City Music Foundation Artist, Making Music UK's Philip and Dorothy Green Young Artist and the winner of the 2021 RNCM Gold Medal.

As a musician with tireless curiosity for all genres of music, Victor's interest in new music has led to recent work with Thomas Adès, Graham Fitkin and Stephen Hough. Victor's affinity with the music of Beethoven has been recognised by two awards from the Beethoven Piano Society of Europe, whilst he is known to have a great personal passion for the works of Robert Schumann.

Victor has made a studio recording of Graham Fitkin's Granite with BBC Philharmonic and has performed with Manchester Collective, Manchester Camerata, Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, Chinke! Orchestra and Royal Northern Sinfonia. Victor recorded his first album with music by Charles Villiers Stanford in the composer's centenary year, to be released by NAXOS in 2027.

An internationally sought-after teacher, Victor has been the Head of Keyboard Studies at Rossall School since 2022, where he is also the Director of the International Piano Academy for gifted young pianists. He also holds teaching positions at the University of Manchester and the Royal Northern College of Music, and is a regular member of the faculty at International Young Musicians Academy and Pro Corda.

Victor trained at Wells Cathedral School with John Byrne and Richard Ormrod, then at the Royal Northern College of Music with Graham Scott, Jeremy Young and Murray McLachlan as an ABRSM scholar. Awards from Help Musicians UK and the Countess of Munster Musical Trust enabled Victor to continue his studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London with Michael Dussek, where he graduated with a Dip.RAM and received the Christian Carpenter Prize for the best final recital. After pursuing the Artist Diploma programme at the Norwegian Academy of Music, Victor completed his studies with Kathryn Stott at the RNCM, gaining their prestigious International Artist Diploma. Victor was selected as one of RNCM's 50 faces in 2023 and was made an Associate of the RNCM in 2025.

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