Proms bound: Yunchan Lim [Lisa-Marie Mazzucco]

IT’S week two of the Proms, and the hot ticket – not just for the next few days but for the entire season – is Yunchan Lim, the young South Korean pianist making his Proms debut on July 29.

Lim is no ordinary pianist. Two years ago, at 18, he became the youngest ever winner of the prestigious Van Cliburn Competition in America. And while some competition winners vanish from the spotlight after their moment of glory, Lim has gone from strength to strength, drawing eulogies from critics that read like love letters.

For his Prom he plays Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto. And it’s coupled on the programme with the first of Bruckner’s mighty symphonies, marking the composer’s bicentenary.

If you’re not sure that Bruckner is your thing, you’re not alone: the combination of naivety and grandeur in his massively constructed works can feel like a child playing with oversized building blocks, piling them up only to knock them down again. But in the right hands – able to excite rather than plod – this music can have roller-coaster power. Give it a go.

Also at the Proms this week is a new, environmentally themed Cello Concerto called Earth, Sea, Air by Cheryl Frances-Hoad, premiering July 26. And on July 30 comes Messiaen’s uninhibitedly robust, if not downright rude, Turangalila Symphony: a piece that always sounds to my ear like a joyous Technicolor fart. Sustained for 80 minutes, it’s enduring proof that serious music isn’t always stuffy.

My other Proms recommendation this week is the premiere of a piece that was commissioned for last year but got postponed. Playing July 31, it’s a new Viola Concerto by Cassandra Millar: a Canadian composer now living in Leytonstone (I once asked her why and she sang the praises of its bread shops!). Miller’s new concerto has a title, I cannot love without trembling, borrowed from an observation by Simone Weill about the fragility of human existence. And that the viola is generally thought a quiet voice among instruments is perhaps of relevance.

But essentially this is a lament. And the writing follows a standard technique of Miller’s, which is to take a “found object”, deconstruct it, then rebuild it in a different way. Here, the “object” is a recording of a folk fiddler riffing on a Greek funeral song. But what’s left of it after Miller has got to work… who knows? Except it will be fascinating.

All these concerts run at the Royal Albert Hall, but also broadcast live on Radio 3. Details: bbc.co.uk/proms

• The Proms are such a juggernaut experience that most other London venues offer no competition for the next few weeks. But Wigmore Hall bravely carries on regardless. And worth noting there is the no-holds-barred cellist Abel Selaocoe on July 26, mixing Bach and Marin Marias with music from his own black South African heritage.

Also at the Wigmore, on July 28, the dazzling young Nordic violinist Johan Dalene – winner of the 2019 Carl Nielsen Competition – plays Beethoven and Debussy alongside music by the Polish composer Grazyna Bacewicz: a significant figure, largely forgotten after her death in 1969 but now back on the agenda, with a vengeance. Details: wigmore-hall.org.uk