Piano Solo – Seong-Jin Cho

With his deeply poetic and brilliantly colourful playing, the South Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho is one of the most sought-after soloists on the world’s leading concert stages. His major breakthrough came in 2015, when he won the prestigious International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw. To grasp the significance of this, it is worth noting that previous winners include such luminaries as Martha Argerich, Maurizio Pollini and Krystian Zimerman.

Cho has appeared at Konserthuset on several occasions in recent years, both in recital and with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. Now, on his return, he takes on the last of Sergei Prokofiev’s three explosive so-called “War Sonatas”, composed between 1940 and 1944 – music that moves between melancholy, hope and despair. We also hear Prokofiev’s ballet music for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, including the famous Montagues and Capulets, often heard in its orchestral version.

Amid Prokofiev’s technical challenges, Seong-Jin Cho has placed Mozart’s multifaceted Fantasy in C minor, in which echoes of the great Baroque masters, Bach and Handel, are clearly audible. And just as Mozart was inspired by his predecessors, Jörg Widmann has drawn inspiration from Mozart. Yet one should not be misled by the title Sonatina facile: this is anything but simple music, in which one of Mozart’s most famous piano sonatas appears as a recurring thread.