Biography
Pianist Seong-Jin Cho, with his innate musicality and overwhelming talent, is admired globally as one of his generation’s leading artists. His thoughtful and poetic, assertive and tender, virtuosic and colorful playing is driven by an impressive natural sense of balance.
In 2015 Cho gained the world’s attention when he won First Prize at Warsaw’s Chopin International Competition. In early 2016 he signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon, and in 2023 was awarded the Samsung Ho-Am Prize in the Arts. He frequently works with prestigious orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, and London Symphony Orchestra, and conductors such as Myung-Whun Chung, Gustavo Dudamel, Andris Nelsons, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Gianandrea Noseda, Simon Rattle, Santtu-Matias Rouvali, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Lahav Shani.
Cho’s 2023–24 season includes his Salzburg Festival debut, performing with the Mozarteum Orchestra and his returns to London’s BBC Proms with the Philharmonia Orchestra. He tours with the Berlin Philharmonic and Kirill Petrenko in South Korea and with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and Andris Nelsons in South Korea and Japan. He makes debuts with The Cleveland, San Francisco Symphony, and Chicago Symphony orchestras.
In recital Cho graces prestigious concert halls worldwide, including Carnegie Hall, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and Berlin Philharmonie. His most recent critically acclaimed album on Deutsche Grammopone’s Yellow Label is The Handel Project (2023).
Born in 1994 in Seoul, Seong-Jin Cho was the youngest winner of Japan’s Hamamatsu International Piano Competition in 2009; at 17 he won Third Prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. From 2012 to 2015 he studied with Michel Béroff at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris.