Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 20, K. 466; Piano Sonat

Seong-Jin Cho’s artistry probes multiple musical layers of three Mozart masterworks. The Korean pianist opens his new album with dynamic interpretation of one of Mozart’s most powerful and dramatic piano concertos & finds ideal partners in Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Chamber Orchestra of Europe. A rich programme highlights lyrical qualities of Mozart’s piano music.

Piano concertos, designed to please a paying audience, were part of Mozart’s daily business. Yet he lifted the genre high above anything that had gone before, so high that he effectively invented it in the form we know today. His mature piano concertos – famously difficult to bring to life in performance – stand among the supreme tests of a performer’s powers. Seong-Jin Cho has chosen one of the most demanding of the composer’s works for keyboard and orchestra, the Piano Concerto in D minor K466, to launch his first Mozart recording for Deutsche Grammophon. The Korean pianist’s latest album, which also includes the dramatic Piano Sonata in F major K332, the early Piano Sonata in B flat major K281, and the Fantasia in D minor K397, bears witness to a musical love affair that began in childhood and has deepened since he won the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw three years ago.

Mozart:
 Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K466
 Piano Sonata No. 3 in B flat, K281
 Piano Sonata No. 12 in F major, K332

"This is the composer, writes the South Korean pianist…who always brings him joy – and there’s a sense of that uncomplicated, direct relationship with the music in his playing. Not that it’s easy to perform, and Cho is always elegant, even and measured…If another concerto might have been more satisfying than the sonatas that complete the disc, Cho’s refinement is always impressive."
BBC Music Magazine - February 2019****

"Cho talks in the booklet interview about how much Mozart means to him and that conviction is apparent in these performances. He couldn’t wish for a more empathetic conductor than Yannick Nézet-Séguin, while the COE combine the warmth of a traditional orchestra with the characterful wind and brass of the period-aware."
Gramophone Magazine - January 2019