Korean Chopin-award winner gets recording contract

Pianist Seong-jin Cho. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Seong-jin Cho, winner of the 2015 International Chopin Piano Competition, has joined Deutsche Grammophon's roster of artists.

The 21-year-old pianist's signing was announced in Seoul, South Korea on Monday, on the eve of the Chopin Competition Prize-Winners' Gala Concert at the Seoul Arts Center.

"It is a genuine honor for me to record for this great label, the champion of the highest values in classical music," says Cho, who will give two concerts with his fellow competition laureates.

Cho is set to record Chopin's Piano Concerto No 1 in partnership with the Staatskapelle Dresden and his fellow countryman Myung-Whun Chung in Dresden in April. He will travel to Berlin later this year to survey the composer's Ballades, works that pose a considerable technical and artistic challenge for a performer.

"We are delighted to add such a remarkable young pianist and already highly accomplished musician to the yellow label," said Clemens Trautmann about his first signing since becoming president of Deutsche Grammophon last December. "The pianist is clearly one of the most supremely gifted artists of his generation. Whoever followed the Chopin Competition or heard him perform a recital, is aware of his creative and playful, yet serious and deeply knowledgeable approach to the centerpieces of the piano repertoire."

Cho grabbed first prize at the prestigious Warsaw competition last October with an exquisite interpretation of the Piano Concerto No 1, described as "unequivocally brilliant" by the Telegraph (London). Deutsche Grammophon launched its new strategic partnership with the Fryderyk Chopin Institute with a rush-released recording of live highlights drawn from Cho's competition performances.

Born in Seoul and playing piano since the age of 6, Cho became the youngest-ever winner of Japan's Hamamatsu International Piano Competition in November 2009; he received third prize at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in July 2011. Cho was awarded the Chopin Competition's coveted Gold Medal following three weeks of competition in October 2015.

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