Welcome to the first volume of my Mozart Piano Sonata recordings. When I began this journey, I wanted to see if I could play Mozart’s piano music as if it were sung – not confined by the idea of being “pure” or “delicate,” but alive, breathing, and vividly expressive, like his operas. To me, Mozart’s keyboard writing is inseparable from his vocal world. His sonatas contain dialogue, wit, and drama – characters who love, tease, and suffer. Each phrase seems to ask not for perfection, but for truth. I hope this recording captures that spirit of Mozart speaking, laughing, and sighing through the piano’s voice.

Acclaimed pianist and organist Jae-Hyuck Cho, one of the most active concert artists in South Korea, returns to Orchid with an album of piano concertos by Mozart, partnered by Hans Graf and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.For this new album Cho has created a programme which draws on two unique works featuring piano.

Chopin is touted to be the ‘poet’ of the piano. One must wonder what that means. A poem is an art form of taking written words and arranging them so that language is elevated up to an artistic realm. I feel Chopin, then, was indeed a poet of the piano. He took the extant musical language of his time, expanded the musical vocabulary, and arranged them to make the expanded scope of expression possible. Chopin’s music requires a specialised kind of pianism: supple yet strong fingers, an almost infinite range of tone colours, a sense of timing that is well-proportioned but not exaggerated, etc. Nina Svetlanova was my teacher during my doctoral studies at the Manhattan School of Music.

Though the works of Russian composer Rachmaninoff are often appreciated for their ardent passion and overflow of emotions, pianist Cho Jae-hyuck aims to examine a more reserved, thought-out side of the Romantic composer’s works with his latest recording of his piano concerto pieces.