It seems appropriate that pianist
Seong-Jin Cho's official
debut recording would feature the music of
Frédéric Chopin, given that he won the Sixth Moscow International Frederick Chopin Competition for Young Pianists in 2008, when he was 14 years old. Other high-profile competition finishes after that led to appearances with internationally known orchestras and conductors.
Cho was born in Seoul on May 28, 1994. He began playing the piano at six and was only 11 when he gave his first recital. Following his Young Pianists win in 2008,
Cho became the youngest ever to win Japan's Hamamatsu International Piano Competition in 2009 and captured third prize in the International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow in 2011. He moved from his native Seoul to Paris in 2012 to study with
Michel Béroff.
When
Cho participated in the 2015 International Chopin Piano Competition, Deutsche Grammophon recorded his concerto performance and rush-released it. It became a best-seller in Korea and Poland, even topping the Korean pop chart. The label then signed
Cho and issued his official
debut album in 2016. The 2016-2017 season had
Cho traveling in Asia with
Esa-Pekka Salonen and the
Philharmonia Orchestra and in Europe with
Mikhail Pletnev and the
Russian National Orchestra, and making his recital debuts in Carnegie Hall and the Royal Concertgebouw, among other places. 2017 also saw the release of a
Debussy recital. The following year, he released an album of music by Mozart, with
Yannick-Nézet-Seguin and the
Chamber Orchestra of Europe. In 2020,
Cho issued a recording of music by
Schubert,
Liszt, and
Berg titled The Wanderer.