https://www.premiereloge-opera.com/article/compte-rendu/concert/2022/09/19/faure-prokofiev-poulenc-et-ravel-ouverture-brillante-de-la-saison-des-concerts-de-lonf-a-lauditorium-de-radio-france-vannina-santoni-cristian-macelaru/

The contrast to Sergius Prokofiev's Second Concerto for Piano and Orchestra , Op 16 could not be greater. Composed in Russia in 1913, then rewritten, it was in Paris that the final version was created in 1923, riddled with technical difficulties by this virtuoso pianist who was the composer. Its initial Rachmaninoff-like romantic theme soon gives way to a grotesque motif of a mechanical puppet before the return of the romantic theme that tortures and dismantles the monumental cadenza that follows.

With extraordinary virtuosity, with its furious rumbling basses and cruel dissonances, it solicits the breadth of the entire keyboard and places the pianist in a hand-to-hand combat with an instrument that has to be tamed and dominated, which the young korean soloistSeong-Jin Cho acquitted himself with mastery and brilliance. No slow movement here: the short, swift and voluble toccata of the Scherzo is followed by the clumsy march of some primitive monster of the Intermezzo in which the sarcastic vein of Prokofiev is expressed.

He finds here the implacable motorism of the Diabolical Suggestion of 1912 which also animates the mechanics of the final Allegro tempestoso . Its second part rediscovers the intonations of popular song and the accents of a funeral march whose furious and wild coda of the whole orchestra leaves the pianist and the listener panting.

How did Seong-Jin Cho, visibly exhausted by this fight, find the energy to give an encore with his delicate interpretation of the graceful Sarabande of theSuite No. 7 in B flat major by George Frederick Handel to a conquered audience, thus responding to Fauré beyond Prokofiev? The room was hoping for another encore from this magnificent, but no doubt exhausted, pianist, Seong-Jin Cho left the stage to renewed applause.