Seong-Jin Cho Seong-Jin Cho

Seong-Jin Cho was born in Seoul in 1994, started piano at six, and gave his first recital at eleven. From 2012 to 2015 he studied with the pianist Michel Béroff at the Conservatoire de Paris in France.

He made a name at international competitions from a young age. In 2009 he became the youngest-ever winner of the Hamamatsu International Piano Competition in Japan, and in 2011 he took third prize at the Tchaikovsky International Competition. Then in October 2015, at the 17th Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw, Poland, he became the first Korean to win first prize.

After winning the Chopin Competition he signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon in January 2016. Starting with an album of Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 and the Ballades, recorded the same year with the London Symphony Orchestra, he went on to release albums such as "Debussy," "Mozart," "The Wanderer," and "The Handel Project." In 2025 he released an album of Ravel's complete solo piano works and an album of Ravel's piano concertos. The Ravel albums came out to mark the 150th anniversary of Ravel's birth.

He also works steadily with the world's leading orchestras. In the 2024/25 season he was Artist in Residence of the Berlin Philharmonic. In 2023 he received the Ho-Am Prize in the Arts. In the 2025/26 season he was chosen as an "Artist Portrait" musician by the London Symphony Orchestra, the first Korean to be so. In 2026 he served as an artist in residence at Lotte Concert Hall, which celebrated its 10th anniversary, giving a chamber music concert on July 14 and a recital on July 19, and on April 12 he gave a recital of Bach, Schoenberg, Schumann, and Chopin at Carnegie Hall in New York. In October he performed Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 with the Vienna Philharmonic on its Korea tour under Tugan Sokhiev.

In October 2026, when announcing its 2027 season, the Seoul Phil said Seong-Jin Cho will perform the Asian premiere of composer Donghoon Shin's Piano Concerto at its subscription concerts on June 24 and 25, 2027, conducted by Jaap van Zweden. The press reported that he will appear on a Seoul Phil subscription concert stage for the first time in 11 years, since 2016. The Berlin Philharmonic notes that Simon Rattle called him a "poet of the piano." From November 2026 he continues performing in European cities, including Hamburg and Berlin in Germany, Vienna in Austria, and in Spain, and in December he plays Donghoon Shin's Piano Concerto in Munich, Germany. In January 2027, he has concerts booked in the U.S., including Philadelphia and San Francisco.