Seong-Jin Cho Tackles a Ravel Piano Marathon in New York

A skilled musician can play pretty much anything. But notes on the page of a score are just a starting point. Beyond that, what makes an artist well suited to a specific sound or style? Age? Personality? Experience?

These are complicated, elusive questions that loomed over the young pianist Seong-Jin Cho’s recent appearances in New York. Earlier this month, he played a marathon of Ravel’s complete solo piano works at Carnegie Hall, and on Thursday he joined the New York Philharmonic at David Geffen Hall as the soloist in Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto. (The program continues through Saturday.)

If these concerts share anything, it’s sheer athleticism. The Ravel survey makes for a three-hour evening of intense focus and finger work; the Prokofiev concerto probably crams the same amount of notes into about 35 minutes.

The similarities end there, though. And it’s in the differences that Cho revealed the state of his artistry at 30, a decade on from his career-making first prize at the International Chopin Piano Competition.

There was a remarkable difference, too, between his readings of the Ravel works in concert and his recording of the same material, released on Deutsche Grammophon last month to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth. (A related album of his, of Ravel’s two piano concertos with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, came out on Friday.) His interpretations of these wide-ranging pieces were freer and more expressive at Carnegie; it would be interesting to hear Cho revisit them again.