Seong-Jin Cho receives praise for St. Louis Symphony debut

Seong-Jin Cho and Nicholas McGegan with St. Louis Symphony in Powell Hall (Photo credit: Jaewon Lee)

A little Viennese Classicism at the symphony with guest conductor
By Eric Meyer
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
March 1, 2020

British guest conductor Nicholas McGegan, a St. Louis favorite, returned to Powell Hall this weekend to lead the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra through what he described as an “extraordinarily jolly concert” of Viennese Classical music featuring Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert.

Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major rounded out the first half of the concert. In his SLSO debut, South Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho handled with fluidity McGegan’s energetic tempos for what McGegan described in his pre-concert remarks as “a romp, a rhythmic bumper-car ride” of a piece.

Poignant moments prevailed along the way. In the lead-up to the cadenza in the second movement, for instance, Cho and the SLSO struck an astonishingly delicate balance between the quiet, intricate beauty of the piano in conversation with the tremendous, dynamic power of the full orchestra.

The large Powell Hall audience erupted in applause at the end of the concerto, and with several curtain calls persuaded Cho to treat them to an encore, another familiar Beethoven keyboard gem, the second movement of Piano Sonata No. 8, “Pathétique.”

By the end, the audience seemed to agree with McGegan’s assessment; the concert felt like an extraordinarily jolly bumper-car ride given by an extraordinary conductor and orchestra.

To read the full concert review, click here.