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| Pianist Cho Jae-hyuck |
By Yun Suh-young
Pianist Cho Jae-hyuck said his upcoming concert "Pilgrimage," scheduled for Friday, will be much like embarking on a "musical pilgrimage."
He'll be playing just one piece from Bach and Beethoven each. His Beethoven piece will be the 50-minute-long Piano Sonata No.29 in B-Flat Major.
"It's a piece that is as difficult to conquer as Mount Everest," said Cho during an interview with The Korea Times.
"I have left this piece to play when I was older and I decided that now is the right time to finally perform the piece."
This piece will be paired with Bach's English Suite No. 2, which he'll play on a harpsichord in the first half of the concert.
"I was wondering what to play alongside that masterpiece and thought of the harpsichord, which is an instrument similar to piano but came before it," he said.
"Both of these pieces will be unfamiliar and may be difficult for the audience to grasp. It'll be much like going on a journey or taking a pilgrimage."
Cho is a pianist who is active both on and off the stage as a performer and narrator. He holds numerous "talk concerts" which combine performance and narration, adding detailed explanations about the pieces he performs.
The Friday concert will not be a "talk concert," instead placing the focus on the music.
"I might be adding a bit of personal story in between the performances, but the concert will be focused more on the music itself than the explanation," he said.
"This is one of the few concerts that I personally organized. I hold 50 to 60 concerts a year and only 10 percent of them are planned solely by me. When I receive performance requests from other organizations, I don't have much freedom in choosing the repertoire. But for this one, I made the call."
Cho holds regular solo piano concerts at the Stradeum in Hannam-dong, Seoul, every last Thursday of the month and at SK Artrium in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, every third Friday of the month. He also is also a regular guest on renowned music critic Jang Il-beom's radio show on KBS.
He graduated from the Julliard School with a bachelor and masters' degree and the Manhattan School of Music with a doctorate. He debuted in 1993 with a solo recital at Carnegie Hall after winning the young artists' audition in New York.
Cho's long-term goal in life is to perfect his musical skills.
"I want to pour everything into my performance and study more. The more you learn, the more you realize you need to improve," he said.
"This process will be repeated throughout my lifetime. I want to reach the pinnacle of excellence but that goal seems to move further and further away the more I learn. There's no such thing as perfection, but I want to reach that stage where my performance can make someone cry because they're touched by the music but not realize why they're crying."
Cho Jae-hyuck's piano recital "Pilgrimage" will be staged at the IBK Chamber Hall of Seoul Arts Center, Friday.
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