Praise for Seong-Jin Cho’s BBC Proms Performance in The Times

The South Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho gave a truly uplifting performance Photo Credit: Chris Christodoulou

Philharmonia Orchestra/Rouvali review — jaw-dropping loveliness from Seong-Jin Cho
By Geoff Brown
The Times
August 17 2023

The Philharmonia’s principal conductor may be a Finnish high-flyer with lively hair, but Santtu-Matias Rouvali hasn’t shifted the orchestra’s standing as one of London’s less adventurous orchestras, at least in terms of repertoire. This imputes no criticism of the way the music is played. And we did, to be fair, have a novelty of sorts: the first complete Proms performance of Richard Strauss’s early symphonic fantasy Aus Italien since 1903.

Was it worth the long wait? To a limited degree, although it would take a mighty work indeed to rub out the joy of what came before: a truly uplifting performance of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No 1 from the top-class South Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho. The composer’s opening sample of orchestration suggested a mudbath, as it usually does, but everything changed once our soloist entered, colouring phrases with unostentatious dexterity, trickling through the notes with powerful poetry and elegance.

In the slow movement he impressed even more, pulling back speeds just enough to increase the emotional weight without courting self-indulgence, with Rouvali and the orchestra admirably in sync. There were times when I felt my jaw drop at the loveliness and clarity of it all, and if the rondo finale found Cho a touch diminished, you can mostly blame Chopin’s fidgets, spraying us with folksy delights without sufficiently tying them together. The encore choice, Chopin’s E flat Nocturne, may have been hackneyed; the playing was anything but.

Read the full article here.