Minsoo Sohn, Yunchan Lim's Teacher, Releases Bach Volume One at 50

Pianist Minsoo Sohn released the first volume of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier this week at age 50. The recording is his most ambitious release since he completed a full cycle of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas in 2021.

International audiences know Sohn primarily as the teacher of Yunchan Lim. The Korea Times, profiling the new release, reconstructs a solo career repeatedly interrupted by injury and recovery.

How serious were the injuries?

Sohn began playing the piano at age 3 and emerged as a rising star when he became the first Korean to win the Honens International Piano Competition in Canada in 2006, the Korea Times reports. Two years later, in 2008, he broke his right hand in an accident.

During recovery, he practiced extensively with his left hand, then injured that as well. He performed nothing for a stretch. Even after closing the Beethoven cycle in 2021, Sohn continued to manage physical problems in both hands, the paper reports.

Key career dates from the Korea Times profile:

• Age 3: began piano
• 2006: first Korean to win Honens
• 2008: right hand broken
• Post-2008: left hand strained during recovery
• 2021: Beethoven sonata cycle completed
• 2026: Bach Well-Tempered Clavier Volume 1 released

What took the recording so long?

The project itself is large. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier runs to 48 preludes and fugues across two books, a set of pieces every serious pianist eventually confronts. Pianists typically record them across multiple sessions and releases spread over several years, and most settle on a single take per prelude and fugue pair.

Decades of earlier recordings already sit in the catalogue, so any new set must argue for itself on interpretive grounds. The Korea Times does not address a release schedule for the remaining installments.

Sohn told the paper: "Every performer has a role to play. I want to reflect on what I can do in my own place and communicate with audiences through music." The Korea Times frames the disc within a narrative of recovery. The remark, offered in a profile piece rather than a press release, lands as both personal statement and industry commentary.

What does it change?

For Sohn, the recording shifts his public profile. He remains Lim's teacher in most readers' minds. But the Bach project returns his own playing to centre stage and reframes him as a recording artist in his own right.

For the wider field, the Korea Times observes that Sohn is "steadily finding his own musical voice" in a classical world "where attention is often concentrated on younger performers." His own line — "Every performer has a role to play" — reads as a quiet rebuttal of that imbalance.

Whether programmers and listeners respond to a 50-year-old's Bach with the same appetite they show for younger soloists is the test the volume now faces on its own terms.