Chopin: Piano Concerto No.2 & Scherzi (CD)

Seong-Jin Cho garnered international attention and critical accolades through his first prize victory in the 2015 Warsaw Chopin Competition, followed by a studio recording pairing Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and the 4 Ballades. Five years later Seong-Jin returns to Chopin with a complementary program consisting of the romantic Piano Concerto No. 2 and the 4 Scherzi.

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Although Cho shares most pianists’ view that the E minor is the trickier of the two concertos from a technical standpoint, he considers the F minor equally challenging. “One has to find an ideal balance between the music’s passion and drama and its many moments of delicacy and fragility, and I feel that it’s important to represent both of these sides.”

Frédéric Chopin’s 4 Scherzi are high points in the Romantic piano repertoire. Chopin here takes a traditional genre and fills it with radically new content. They are wild, demonic in tone, and there is little about them that is joke-like, despite the original meaning of their title.

TRACK LIST

FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN (1810–1849)
1. Scherzo No. 1 in B minor op. 20 - Presto con fuoco
2. Scherzo No. 2 in B flat minor op. 31 - Presto
3. Scherzo No. 3 in C sharp minor op. 39 - Presto con fuoco
4. Scherzo No. 4 in E major op. 54 - Presto
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2 in F minor op. 21
5. I. Maestoso
6. II. Larghetto
7. III. Allegro vivace