New Generation Piano Recital Seong-Jin Cho
- Date
- 27 October 2017 – 8:30pm
- Place
- Auditorium
A bridge between South Korea, his place of birth, and France, where he has trained at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris. That description serves as an outline for the career of Seong-Jin Cho. The portrait is completed with myriad prizes, won at the most important competitions in the world: the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, and the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, which awarded him First Prize in 2015!
For this first appearance at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Seong-Jin Cho will bring together two of his favourite composers: Beethoven, the tormented composer of Sonata No. 8 op. 13, composed in 1799, and the assuaged composer of Sonata Op. 109, composed nearly twenty years later; and Chopin, and his Four Ballades. Lyrical, untamed or heart-rending, each of these pieces embodies an outpouring of romanticism.
the artist
Seong-Jin Cho
Piano
Seong-Jin Cho garnered international acclaim in October 2015 by winning First Prize at the highly prestigious Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, following in the footsteps of Martha Argerich, Krystian Zimerman, Maurizio Pollini, Rafa³ Blechacz and Li Yundi. In 2011, when he was barely 17, Seong-Jin won Third Prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competititon in Moscow.
Early 2016, Seong-Jin Cho signed an exclusive contract with the esteemed Deutsche Grammophon. Later that year, he released his interpretation of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1, with the London Symphony Orchestra directed by Gianandrea Noseda, and the Four Ballades. A second album devoted to Debussy is planned for 2017.
His playing is deeply poetic, subtle, tender, and expressive, with a technical mastery that is astonishing but never fulsome, his authoritative and natural sense of balance making him a great pianist. He has been invited as soloist by orchestras such as Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Liverpool Philharmonic, Mariinsky St. Petersburg, the Munich Philharmonic, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Czech Philharmonie, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Russian National Orchestra, Orchestra of Paris, NHK Symphony Orchestra, National Orchestra of Lyon, Santa Cecilia National Academy Orchestra, led by conductors such as Myung-Whun Chung, Gianandrea Noseda, Antonio Pappano, Marek Janowski, Mikhail Pletnev, Valery Gergiev, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Yuri Temirkanov.
During the 2016/2017 season, Seong-Jin performed recitals at the main hall of Carnegie Hall and at Suntory Hall, Munich Herkulessaal, Birmingham Town Hall, KKL Luzern, and at the illustrious Piano Masters series hosted by the Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. He was one of the very first guest performers in recital at the new hall La Seine Musicale in Paris. He toured with the Russian National Orchestra and Mikhail Pletnev, and with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Esa-Pekka Salonen.
During the 2017/2018 and 2018/2019 season, Seong-Jin Cho will be reunited with the London Symphony Orchestra and Gianandrea Noseda, perform for the first time in Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg alongside the NDR Orchestra directed by Krzysztof Urbañski, and play with Frankfurt Radio Symphony and its music director Andrés Orozco-Estrada, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Gustavo Gimeno, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Leonard Slatkin, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Kremerata Baltica, and Rotterdam Philharmonic. He will also perform at the Rencontres musicales d'Evian, tour with the Mariinsky and Valery Gergiev, and make his recital debuts at the Vienna Konzerthaus, Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, the Kissinger Sommer music festival, the Rheingau Musik Festival, the Edinburgh International Festival, the Gstaad Menuhin Festival, and the Verbier Festival, before returning to Concertgebouw and the Festival de la Roque-d’Anthéron, among other venues across the globe.
Moving to Paris in 2012 to study with Michel Béroff, Seong-Jin previously studied in Seoul with S.R. Park and S.J. Shin. He began playing the piano at age six, and gave his first recital five years later. As a young pianist, he performed regularly in South Korea and Japan before taking to the world stage.
Partners
The programme
- Ludwig van Beethoven
- Sonata no. 8 op.13 ‘Sonata Pathétique’
- Ludwig van Beethoven
- Sonata no. 30 op.109
- Frédéric Chopin
- Ballades
