REVIEW: Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto with Seong-Jin Cho
Review Date: 22 October @Royal Festival Hall
REVIEWS
Kassy Fang
10/26/20262 min read
Philharmonia_Seong-Jin Cho ©️Photo by Marc Gascoigne
At the Royal Festival Hall, Seong-Jin Cho’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto was compelling for its finely judged detail and sense of proportion. Every note seemed to have its own colour; the playing was finely wrought, with an incisive edge that kept the music alert and alive. The interpretation held together convincingly, its individual passages contributing to a clear musical argument. Here was a persuasive account of a familiar concerto, with virtuosity firmly integrated into the music’s larger design.
What also came through was Cho’s restraint in handling Tchaikovsky’s more expansive melodies. He allowed them to develop without overindulging their Romantic sweep, giving the lyrical passages a naturalness that balanced the concerto’s grander gestures.
For his encore, Cho played Tchaikovsky’s October: Autumn Song, the tenth piece from The Seasons, Op. 37a. On an October evening, it was an especially fitting choice. After the expansive gestures of the concerto, this brief miniature brought a more intimate perspective on the composer, its appeal resting on the delicate shaping of the melody and subtle changes of colour.
In the second half, Santtu-Matias Rouvali led the Philharmonia Orchestra in Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11, The Year 1905, which transformed the mood of the evening. Inspired by the Bloody Sunday massacre in St Petersburg, the symphony draws on revolutionary songs to trace a progression from mounting tension to violence, mourning and defiance. Its opening strings create an atmosphere of uneasy anticipation, which erupts into the brutal momentum of the second movement. The third, Eternal Memory, is a lament for the dead. In the finale, the insistent percussion drives the music forward, while the bells near the close give its warning an unmistakable force.
The symphony’s power lies partly in the changing meaning of its recurring melodies, which move between collective memory, grief and political defiance. Set against the Tchaikovsky concerto, it offered a striking contrast in scale and perspective: from the individuality and expressive freedom of the piano to the weight of collective history. Together, the two works made for an evening that moved from the exhilaration of Romantic virtuosity to the darker, more unsettling territory of political memory.
★★★★
For more information, please visit: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/tchaikovsky-piano-concerto-with-seong-jin-cho/
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