Seong-Jin Cho / Yannick Nézet-Séguin / Chamber Orchestra Of Europe MOZART

Piano concertos, designed to please a paying audience, were part of Mozart’s daily business. Yet he lifted the genre high above anything that had gone before, so high that he effectively invented it in the form we know today. His mature piano concertos – famously difficult to bring to life in performance – stand among the supreme tests of a performer’s powers. Seong-Jin Cho has chosen one of the most demanding of the composer’s works for keyboard and orchestra, the Piano Concerto in D minor K466, to launch his first Mozart recording for Deutsche Grammophon. The Korean pianist’s latest album, which also includes the dramatic Piano Sonata in F major K332, the early Piano Sonata in B flat major K281, and the Fantasia in D minor K397, bears witness to a musical love affair that began in childhood and has deepened since he won the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw three years ago.

Seong-Jin Cho DEBUSSY

In his latest recording, 23-year-old South Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho presents an all-Debussy programme. Debussy follows Cho’s two best-selling Chopin recordings.
It is entirely fitting that Seong-Jin Cho, winner of the 2015 International Chopin Piano Competition, should now turn to Debussy. Towards his life’s close, the French composer edited the piano works of Chopin, an experience that reignited his creativity, opening his heart to music he had loved since childhood. In turn, Cho’s connection to Debussy runs deep. He performed “Golliwogg’s Cake-walk” from Children’s Corner as part of his first public recital at the age of eleven, and his passion for the composer developed in parallel with his exploration of Chopin. He was therefore delighted to have the opportunity of commemorating the centenary of Debussy’s death, which falls in March 2018, with his own tribute.
Since childhood, Cho has felt many affinities with Debussy and he was keen to mark the centenary in his own style. The new album features both books of Images, each comprising three pieces of breathtaking imagination, in company with Children’s Corner and Suite Bergamasque, the latter including the hugely popular “Clair de lune”. Rounding things off in jubilant fashion is the beautiful “L’Isle joyeuse”.
“I have always loved Debussy’s music, but my feeling for it has deepened during my studies with Michel Béroff at the Paris Conservatoire,” Cho recalls. “Michel never presses me to accept his ideas on interpretation, which would be so easy for such a great master of Debussy’s music. His lessons are like meetings in which we discuss my playing, talk about music and art, and allow things to develop naturally. It’s a process of mutual understanding with Michel occasionally making suggestions about something that I might consider changing. Because he has such a profound connection to Debussy, he asks questions that can open your mind and ears to new possibilities.”

Cho Seong-jin / London Symphony Orchestra / Gianandrea Noseda CHOPIN Piano Concerto No. 1 - Ballades

Cho Seong-jin, winner of this year's International Chopin Piano Competition, will release his debut album with the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Italian conductor Gianandrea Noseda, Deutsche Grammophon announced, Monday. He had initially planned to make his debut studio recording with conductor Chung Myung-whun, former music director of the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra (SPO). 

Cho was scheduled to start recording Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 and Chopin's four Ballades in April under the baton of maestro Chung and the Staatskapelle Dresden Orchestra where Chung has been principal guest conductor since the 2012-13 season.  

Chung reportedly canceled the recording because of personal reasons. 

Also Chung will no longer conduct Cho's Chopin performance with the SPO at Seoul Arts Center, July 15. He will be replaced by French conductor Yan Pascal Torteller. 

The pianist will be performing the award-winning Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 that shot him to fame last October by making him the first Korean to win the International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition. (Park Jin-hai)