Seong-Jin Cho

With his sincerely poetic and masterfully colourful playing, South Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho is one of the most in-demand soloists of the world’s major concert stages. His major career breakthrough was in 2015, when he won the famous Chopin Competition in Warsaw. To understand the significance of this, it should be mentioned that greats such as Martha Argerich, Maurizio Pollini and Krystian Zimerman are among the past winners.

We hear him perform in Chopin’s demanding Scherzos. The best known of the four is number two in B-flat minor/D-flat major. (The keys are equally dominant and are so-called relative keys, with the same number of signatures, which is why both are usually also stated.) Robert Schumann likened this scherzo to a poem by Lord Byron: “So filled with tenderness, courage, love and scorn”. 

Before the intermission, he performs two suites by Händel and Ravel’s incredibly masterful piano suite Gaspard de la nuit, from 1909, one of the most technically challenging pieces a pianist can face.