Poaching alert: Chopin winner is snapped

We’re hearing that the South Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho, winner of the 2015 Chopin Competition in Warsaw, has dumped his boutique management at Primo Arts in New York and signed with K D Schmid, to be managed mostly from London.

The move, which has yet to be made public, comes at the end of the pianist’s tour of all leading US orchestras, plus Carnegie Hall, a feat of organisation which placed him among the foremost artists on the current circuit.

So why would he jump now? Because it doen’t take much to persuade any artist that the grass next door is greener, or that someone else can do more by way of ego boost. The lure of bigger letters on a concert poster is irresistible. (UPDATE: Also a smaller commission). The notion of gratitude died long ago.

Seong-Jin Cho, who is about to turn 31, had been playing school halls in America before Primo took him up and put him in the big time. Schmid will have to produce Easter rabbits out of its European lawn to advance his career much further.