Seong-Jin Cho and Ravel: precision, poetry and stamina at Carnegie Hall

United States Ravel: Seong-Jin Cho (piano). Carnegie Hall, New York, 5.5.2025. (ES-S)

Ravel – ‘Sérénade grotesque’, ‘Menuet antique’, ‘Pavane pour une infante défunte’, ‘Jeux d’eau’, ‘Sonatine’, Miroirs, Gaspard de la nuit, ‘Menuet sur le nom d’Haydn’, Valses nobles et sentimentales, ‘Prélude’, ‘À la manière de Borodine’, ‘À la manière d’Emmanuel Chabrier’, Le Tombeau de Couperin

Two weeks after Bruce Liu delivered a splendid Russian music recital at Carnegie Hall, Seong-Jin Cho, another past winner of the prestigious Chopin Competition in Warsaw, took to the same stage to demonstrate that his musical interests, too, extend well beyond the works of the Polish master.

Marking the 150th anniversary of Maurice Ravel’s birth in a small town near the French-Spanish border, the Korean-born pianist undertook the ambitious feat of performing Ravel’s complete solo piano works originally conceived for the instrument – so not La valse – in chronological order over a more-than-three-hour evening.

The performance was streamed live via Deutsche Grammophon’s Stage+ service; DG has also released a recording of the same program. By the time Cho reached the final point of a recital played entirely from memory – the demanding Toccata from Le Tombeau de Couperin, delivered with stunning clarity – it was hard to fully grasp the magnitude of what he had accomplished, both in technical mastery and in sheer stamina. Nor was this a one-time event: he will reprise the program several times in the coming months across both America and Europe.

Wednesday night’s performance was about much more than endurance and resilience: it was, above all, a labor of love. As Cho himself recently declared, he is ‘fascinated by the ideas, colors and emotions to be found in Ravel’s music’.

Listening to Ravel’s entire piano output in Cho’s masterful interpretation, one could easily grasp the fundamental unity of an oeuvre that, over more than two decades – from ‘Sérénade grotesque’ to Le Tombeau de Couperin – deepened and evolved while preserving its essential traits: meticulous craftsmanship demanding great interpretative precision, an orchestral mindset with a brilliant use of color, the unmistakable French élégance and Cartesian clarity, the interplay of lyricism and irony and the composer’s refusal to abandon tonality despite frequently venturing into harmonically unstable territories.

It was also wonderful to observe how Ravel’s favored themes crisscross his piano output: dance rhythms, Spanish reminiscences, Baroque forms, the restless movement of water (‘Jeux d’eau’, ‘Ondine’, ‘Une barque sur l’océan’) or the tolling of bells (‘La vallée des cloches’ from Miroirs or the persistent B-flat octave ostinato in ‘Le Gibet’ from Gaspard de la nuit).

Placed between the evening’s two intervals, Miroirs and Gaspard de la nuit stood out as the recital’s highlights. In Miroirs, Cho balanced structural integrity with an impressionistic-like atmosphere, emphasizing architecture even as he conjured vivid sonic images – the distant birdsong in ‘Oiseaux tristes’, the fluttering wings in ‘Noctuelles’, the hypnotic ripple of waves in ‘Une barque sur l’océan’. His ‘Alborada del gracioso’, one of the pieces Ravel later orchestrated himself, was rendered with immaculate rhythmic precision and crisp articulation, imbued with Iberian echoes yet devoid of any affectation.

Gaspard de la nuit was a testament to Cho’s control over every aspect of interpretation while bringing out the distinct character of each movement. In ‘Ondine’, he sustained the melodic thread despite the abundance of cascading arpeggios. ‘Le Gibet’ was imbued with eerie restraint. ‘Scarbo’, often reduced to mere virtuosity and fireworks, emerged here as a sinister portrait of Aloysius Bertrand’s menacing, volatile goblin, darting unpredictably through shadows. The pianist built tension through pacing and accentuation not bombast.

While short, individual pieces floated away before one could fully form an opinion, Le Tombeau de Couperin struck a balance between precision and elegance, refinement and irony, with Cho never taking the suite’s neoclassical poise too seriously.

The spirits of Schubert and Liszt hovered over this performance, as did Debussy’s more imaginative, daring harmonies. And then there was Chopin, Cho’s old ‘flame’, subtly shaping his refined phrasing and rubato, particularly in the clear textures and elegant ornamentation of the stylized dance forms in Valses nobles et sentimentales.

After immersing himself in the music of Chopin, Mozart, Debussy and now Ravel – along with a series of intriguing ‘side trips’ – the young and talented Seong-Jin Cho will surely delve deeper into other corners of the repertoire. What will they be? Robert Schumann? Brahms? Twentieth-century music? One can hardly wait.

Edward Sava-Segal

Featured Image: Seong-Jin Cho © Stephanie Berger