Seong-Jin Cho, St John's Smith Square

The International Chopin Piano Competition, held once every five years, is one of the world’s most prestigious musical contests. Based in Warsaw, participants must play only the works of Frederick Chopin, Poland’s greatest composer. Since the 1950s, It has been won by the likes of Maurizio Pollini, Martha Argerich and Krystian Zimmerman, with runners up including Mitsuko Uchida and Vladmir Ashkenazy.
In 2015, the young South Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho won the seventeenth competition. Already a sell-out success in his native country, his reputation is beginning to reach the West. For his debut appearance in the Southbank Centre’s International Piano Series, Seong-Jin will play a wide selection of Chopin’s solo piano pieces – including the heroic Polonaise in A Flat (1842) that saw him win the Best Polonaise prize in Warsaw.
Other probable highlights include the 4 Marzukas (1830-3), the fourth of which is a masterful dream-dance, and the exploratory Ballade No. 2 (1836-9) and its painterly emotional landscape. The concert will close with the Scherzo No. 2 (1837), which despite its name is one of the stormiest works in the composer’s catalogue. This looks to be a stimulating introduction to a future superstar.