Four Hands, Two Sonatas Ratings Climb as Buzz Stays No. 1

The number came in on the drama's weaker night. On Saturday, September 26, the latest episode drew 7.2% nationwide, according to Nielsen Korea figures reported by Soompi — its best Saturday yet, and first in its time slot across all channels. Saturdays, Soompi notes, have generally trailed its Sundays.

That figure is the newest line in a run that explains why Four Hands, Two Sonatas is the K-drama Korea is talking about most right now. Four Hands, Two Sonatas ratings set a series high of 7.9% on September 20, and the drama has held No. 1 on Good Data Corporation's weekly list of the most buzzworthy dramas for three consecutive weeks, with its two leads at No. 1 and No. 2 among actors. Soompi calls the September 26 episode the start of the final two weeks of its run.

The setup: writer Shin Yi-won and director Park Hyun-seok put three musicians in an arts high school. Song Kang plays Kang Pi-o, a piano prodigy ranked first. Lee Jun-young plays Choi Jeong-yo, a naturally gifted pianist who abandoned his talent and enrolls, becoming Pi-o's rival and friend. Jang Gyu-ri plays Hong Jae-in, a viola major with exceptional hearing who has admired Pi-o since childhood. The title is a piano term for a four-handed performance. It airs on tvN on Saturdays and Sundays at 21:10 KST and streams on TVING in Korea and Netflix globally; our guide to watching K-dramas legally covers the rest by region.

Three weeks at No. 1, and the buzz belongs to Lee Jun-young

Good Data Corporation builds its weekly ranking from news articles, blog posts, online communities, videos and social media about dramas that are airing or about to air. It counts talk, not viewers. Four Hands, Two Sonatas debuted at No. 1 on September 6, held it on September 13 and made it three in a row on September 20. On all three actor lists the order was the same: Lee Jun-young No. 1, Song Kang No. 2.

Below it on September 20: ENA's New Recruit 4: Sabotage, Disney+'s Made in Korea 2 and KBS 2TV's A Love Other Than Yours, in that order. Netflix's The Scandal debuted at No. 10.

A second index flips the pair. In the September actor brand reputation rankings Soompi reported on September 22 — 100 actors from dramas, films and OTT content released between August 22 and September 22, scored on media coverage, participation, interaction and community indexes — Song Kang was No. 1 on 4,351,209. Seo Kang Jun, of A Love Other Than Yours, was No. 2 on 4,319,536, just 31,673 points behind. Lee Jun-young was No. 7 and Jang Gyu-ri No. 30. The drama's Wikipedia entry lists it as Song Kang's comeback project after his military discharge, the kind of story that pulls coverage toward one name.

Four Hands, Two Sonatas ratings vs. the buzz list

Buzz against ratings. Set the three weekly buzz ranks beside Nielsen Korea's nationwide figures, all as reported by Soompi, for the two KBS 2TV dramas Soompi tracks alongside it, and the lists stop agreeing.

Drama	Buzz rank, Sept 6 → 13 → 20	Rating, Sept 20	Rating, Sept 26
Four Hands, Two Sonatas (tvN)	1 → 1 → 1	7.9%	7.2%
Love on the Menu (KBS 2TV)	5 → 7 → 8	14.5%	Did not air
A Love Other Than Yours (KBS 2TV)	8 → 5 → 4	2.6%	Did not air

On September 20, Love on the Menu was the most-watched show of the Sunday at 14.5%, 6.6 points above Four Hands, Two Sonatas' series high that night, while sliding from No. 5 to No. 8 on the buzz list. A Love Other Than Yours drew 2.6% and moved the other way, No. 8 to No. 4, while Seo Kang Jun rose from No. 7 to No. 3 among actors between the September 13 and 20 lists. Four Hands, Two Sonatas won its own time slot on both nights. Most-talked-about and most-watched are two different titles, and on September 20 they went to two different dramas.

The Saturday best, and what it was up against

The September 26 number needs one footnote. According to Soompi, neither Love on the Menu nor A Love Other Than Yours aired a new episode that night because of Asian Games coverage. What did air: JTBC's Fly High Butterfly drew 1.4% for its third episode, and Channel A's new time-slip romance Dive into You premiered at 0.3%. At 7.2%, Four Hands, Two Sonatas drew about five times the first and 24 times the second. So the Saturday best came on a night with two KBS 2TV dramas off the schedule. That is context, not an asterisk. The 7.2% still sits 0.7 points under the September 20 high, so Sunday remains the night to beat.

Mina's Take

In our ranking of 2026's best K-dramas so far I wrote that buzz is not a metric. I'd narrow that now: Good Data's list measures volume, not quality, and read that way it says something the ratings can't — whose show this is. The comeback story belongs to Song Kang, and the brand index agrees. The buzz list has disagreed three weeks running: Lee Jun-young first, Song Kang second. My read is that the talk is about Jeong-yo, the pianist who walked away from his gift, more than about the prodigy. My call: Lee Jun-young is still No. 1 on Good Data's actor list the week the drama ends. If Song Kang overtakes him before then, I misread whose show this is.

What to watch next

• The next Sunday episode. It is the first Sunday of the final two weeks, and the figure to beat is 7.9%. Nothing so far has cleared 8%.
• Good Data's next weekly list. A fourth straight week at No. 1 is the obvious question. The better one is whether A Love Other Than Yours, No. 8 to No. 4 across three lists, keeps climbing once it is back on air.
• October's actor brand reputation rankings. Song Kang led Seo Kang Jun by 31,673 points, under 1% of his score. A gap that thin can flip in a month.