Seong-Jin Cho - The Wanderer (2020) CD-Rip

The Wanderer: Schubert, Berg, Liszt Review by James Manheim [-]
Seong-Jin Cho's The Wanderer takes its title from Schubert's Fantasy in C major, D. 760, which bears that subtitle, but that work hangs together well with the Berg Piano Sonata, Op. 1, and the Liszt Piano Sonata in B minor that fill out the program. All three works are sonatas of a sort and reflect the persistence of the sonata idea (or its decay, depending on your perspective) in the later Romantic and early modern eras. Pianist Cho both recognizes this unity and builds on it with sharply contrasting performances. His Wanderer Fantasy is clean, Olympian in the Beethovenian polyphony of the last "movement," and a trifle restrained. His Berg sonata is Viennese, tuneful, a bit smoky, oriented toward the work's late Romantic predecessors more than to the innovations to come. If listeners find these performances competent but unremarkable, they must persist. Cho's Liszt Sonata in B minor is an extraordinarily powerful and dramatic performance. Cho is not the first pianist whose inner virtuoso star has been shaken loose by this work, but the pianist has the power to deliver on his considerable ambitions. Sample from the beginning to hear the muscular approach, and be assured that the sweep of the work is uninterrupted. This is a Liszt sonata to stand with those of the giants, and the whole album is well worth the time and money.

The romantic theme of the wanderer, the free spirit undertaking a journey into the self, runs through this album by Seong-Jin Cho. The globetrotting Korean pianist's programme includes two monuments of the 19th-century repertoire - Schubert's 'Wanderer Fantasy' and Liszt's 'Piano Sonata in B Minor'. 'The Wanderer' also contains Alban Berg's 'Piano Sonata, Op. 1', a single movement work of extraordinary intensity.