Seong-Jin Cho’s Award Winning Performance On CD
When the 21-year-old South Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho won the 17th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition last year, Deutsche Grammophon had their microphones at the ready to record his award-winning performances. This recording is now available as a debut solo album simply entitled Seong-Jin Cho.
Cho’s record speaks for itself. He has been winning competitions since 2008 when he took out the International Fryderyk Chopin competition for Young Pianists, followed in 2009 by the Hamatsu Piano Competition in Japan and third place in Russia’s Tchaikovsky Competition in 2011 and Tel Aviv’s Arthur Rubinstein Competition in 2014. Since then he has performed with elite orchestras around the world conducted by Valery Gergiev, Mikhail Pletnev, Myung-whun Chung and Lorin Maazel. He has been invited to work with violinist Kyung-Wha Chung and is presently continuing his studies with Michel Beroff at the Paris Conservatoire.
The International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition is held every five years. Its winners include Marta Argerich, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Garrick Ohlsson, who have also served as adjudicators, Maurizio Pollini and Mitsuko Uchida. Adjudicators in the past have included Maurice Ravel, Nadia Boulanger and Karol Szymanowski.
The 30 tracks on the CD include Chopin’s 24 Préludes opus 28, the Nocturne in C minor op. 48/1of, the Piano Sonata No. 2 in B flat minor op. 35 and the Polonaise in A flat major op. 53.
