Seong-Jin Cho Piano

Seong-Jin Cho was born in Seoul in 1994. He began studying the piano at the age of six and gave his first public recital when he was eleven. In 2009, he became the youngest pianist to win the Hamamatsu International Competition in Japan. In 2011, he was awarded third prize at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. In 2012, he moved to Paris, where he studied under Michel Béroff at the Conservatoire, ultimately graduating from that institution in 2015. He currently lives in Berlin.

His career took on an international dimension in 2015 when he won the Gold Medal at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw. In less than a month, a recording with Deutsche Grammophon would propel him to star status. In January 2016, following the success of his first recording, Seong-Jin Cho signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon. He recorded Chopin’s Concerto N°1 with the London Symphony Orchestra and Gianandrea Noseda as well as the four Ballades. A Debussy album followed in the Autumn of 2017.

He has also performed in recital in some of the world’s most prestigious concert halls. In 2017, he made his debut appearances at Carnegie Hall (Keyboard Virtuoso Series), Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, Seoul’s Lotte Hall, the Seine Musicale in Paris, the Edinburgh Festival, the Menuhin Festival in Gstaad, the KKL in Lucerne and the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg. He has played under the direction of numerous conductors, including Valery Gergiev, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Gianandrea Noseda, Antonio Pappano, Myung-Whun Chung, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Yuri Temirkanov, Krzysztof Urbanski, Marek Janowski, Vasily Petrenko, Jakub Hrůša, Leonard Slatkin, and Mikhail Pletnev. This season, he made his debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle for a tour in Germany and Asia and with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester and Krzysztof Urbanski (Rachmaninov’s Concerto N°2 ). In the near future, he will be appearing with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Centre and with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center. He will also be performing in recital at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, the Prinzregenttheater in Munich, the Verbier Festival, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Rheingau Festival, the La Roque d’Anthéron Festival, the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus and the Vienna Konzerthaus.