The sensational South Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho, the best-selling winner of the International Chopin Competition, shares his love for an often neglected corner of the keyboard repertoire: Handel’s Keyboard Suites. Each suite is brilliantly characterful and brimming with life, and Cho has selected his three absolute favorites to play in full. Another lover of Handel’s Keyboard Suites was Johannes Brahms – so Cho pairs the suites with the later composer’s spectacular “Handel Variations”, op.24.

Cho finds that Baroque music gives the performer a good deal of leeway. “You can use a certain amount of pedal and play these works in a very Romantic way.” As a result the Korean pianist has sought as far as possible to avoid using the sustaining pedal “in order to ensure greater clarity”. On the other hand, he has altered some of the dynamics in order to exploit the possibilities of a modern piano.

“I really worked on my technique a lot as I wanted to bring out all of the voices. I tried to maintain different colours in them all. And I imagined a concerto grosso. The lefthand voice, for example, could sound like a bassoon. Or a voice in the right hand could sound like a violin.” – Seong-Jin Cho