Biography
“Seong-Jin Cho [is] an absolute master of clarifying textures with multiple shades of colour and touch; an expert juggler too, able to respect baroque sprightliness while also using a modern piano’s resources to warm and expand the music’s aura.”
The Times, reviewing The Handel Project
Intense reflection and expressive insight are among the attributes cultivated by Seong-Jin Cho, qualities apt to connect with audiences at the deepest levels of imagination and emotion. The award-winning pianist has won widespread public and critical acclaim for his refined artistry in an extensive range of repertoire. Hailed by the Wall Street Journal as “a master of the virtuosic miniature”, he has received equal praise for his eloquent readings of concertos and larger-scale solo works by composers from Mozart to Shostakovich.
The South Korean pianist shot to fame when he won First Prize at the 17th Chopin International Piano Competition in October 2015. When Deutsche Grammophon rush-released performances recorded live during the Competition, the all-Chopin album was propelled to the No. 1 spot in the Korean pop chart on the strength of pre-release orders alone. Having secured triple platinum sales in Korea within a week of its release in November 2015, it rapidly went on to attract a worldwide following. Cho signed an exclusive contract with DG in January 2016.
His first studio album for the Yellow Label, released in November 2016, featured more music by Chopin: the Four Ballades, and the Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra and Gianandrea Noseda. Next came an all-Debussy affair: Images I and II, L’isle joyeuse, the Suite bergamasque and Children’s Corner, released in November 2017, in time to mark the composer’s centenary in 2018.
A year later Cho released an album of works by Mozart – Sonatas K281 and K332, and Concerto No. 20 in D minor K466, for which he was joined by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. This was followed in May 2020 by The Wanderer, which opens with Schubert’s mighty Wanderer Fantasy D760, and closes with Liszt’s legendary Sonata in B minor, a work whose scale and complexity reveal the influence of the Wanderer Fantasy. Framed by these is Berg’s Piano Sonata, Op. 1, indebted in turn to Liszt.
For his next recording he teamed up with Matthias Goerne, one of the world’s most renowned Lieder singers, to perform a selection of late Romantic works by Wagner, Pfitzner and Richard Strauss. The pianist then reunited with the LSO and Gianandrea Noseda to continue his exploration of the music of Chopin. Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 2 · Scherzi was released in August 2021, the digital version featuring three bonus solo tracks: the “Revolutionary” Étude, Op. 10 no. 12, Impromptu No. 1, Op. 29 and Nocturne, Op. 9 no. 2.
He turned to the Baroque for The Handel Project, recording three suites from Handel’s first collection of Suites de pièces pour le clavecin. These were paired with Brahms’s creative response to music by the same composer: the Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel. The Handel Project was released in February 2023.
Seong-Jin Cho’s main focus in 2025 is the music of Ravel. He has chosen to mark the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth by recording his complete solo piano music and the two concertos. Ravel: Complete Solo Piano Works was released in January (“Ravel playing of such perfection of detail does not come round often” – Financial Times) and achieved instant gold status in South Korea.
Its companion release, Ravel: The Piano Concertos, in which the pianist is joined by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and its Music Director Andris Nelsons, comes out on 21 February. A deluxe edition presenting the complete recordings will be issued digitally and as a 3-CD box set on 2 May.
Ravel also features prominently in Cho’s 2025 touring schedule. He gives marathon performances of the complete solo works – a rarely attempted feat – as part of a major US tour, including dates at Carnegie Hall and Walt Disney Concert Hall (February/March), then at London’s Barbican Centre and venues throughout Germany, notably Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie and the Berlin Philharmonie, the latter as part of his season as Artist in Residence with the Berliner Philharmoniker (April/May).
He performs Ravel’s Concerto in G with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and The Cleveland Orchestra in February/March, and in July plays it and the Concerto for the Left Hand with Nelsons and the BSO at Tanglewood, where he also presents the complete solo works in recital. Further Ravel dates will follow in the US and Asia over the summer.
Other recent and forthcoming highlights include his debut as the Berliner Philharmoniker’s Artist in Residence, in Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1 (for piano, trumpet and strings); Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto in Seoul with the Wiener Philharmoniker and Nelsons; and Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto with the New York Philharmonic (February 2025), Chicago Symphony Orchestra (February/March) and Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich (May).
Born in Seoul on 28 May 1994, Seong-Jin Cho began playing piano at the age of six and gave his first public performance at eleven. In September 2008 he won the Sixth Moscow International Frederick Chopin Competition for Young Pianists and the following year took First Prize at the Hamamatsu International Piano Competition in Japan. Having moved to Paris in 2012 to study with Michel Béroff at the Conservatoire, he is now based in Berlin.
Paving the way to Cho’s victory at the prestigious Chopin International Piano Competition were Third Prize successes at the 2011 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and the 2014 Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition, as well as concerto dates with leading conductors and orchestras. He continues to perform on a regular basis with such eminent figures as Myung-Whun Chung, Gustavo Dudamel, Andris Nelsons, Vasily Petrenko, Santtu-Matias Rouvali, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Yuri Temirkanov, and major international orchestras including the Berliner Philharmoniker, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, NHK Symphony, Orchestre de Paris, Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Wiener Philharmoniker.
2/2025