Czech Philharmonic • Semyon Bychkov

In recognition of the 2024 Year of Czech Music – a major celebration of Czech music celebrated across the Czech Republic every 10 years since 1924 – Chief Conductor and Music Director Semyon Bychkov has put the music of Antonín Dvořák at the centre of his programmes with the Czech Philharmonic throughout the 2023–2024 season. In addition to conducting three programmes devoted to Dvořák in Prague, Bychkov and the Orchestra will tour the Dvořák programmes to South Korea, Japan, Spain, Austria, Germany, Belgium and the United States, as well as recording the last three symphonies for Pentatone. 

Semyon Bychkovʼs tenure at the Czech Philharmonic began in 2018 with concerts in Prague, London, New York, and Washington commemorating the 100th anniversary of Czechoslovak independence. Following the culmination of The Tchaikovsky Project, Bychkov and the Orchestra began their focus on Mahler. The first discs in a new Mahler cycle were released by Pentatone in 2022, with Symphony No. 5 chosen by The Sunday Times as its Best Classical Album.

Bychkovʼs repertoire spans four centuries. His highly anticipated performances are a unique combination of innate musicality and rigorous Russian pedagogy. In addition to guest engagements with the world’s major orchestras and opera houses, Bychkov holds honorary titles with the BBC Symphony Orchestra – with whom he appears annually at the BBC Proms – and the Royal Academy of Music, who recently awarded him an Honorary Doctorate. Bychkov was named “Conductor of the Year” by the International Opera Awards in 2015 and, by Musical America in 2022.

Bychkov began recording in 1986 and released discs with the Berlin Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio, Royal Concertgebouw, Philharmonia Orchestra and London Philharmonic for Philips. Subsequently a series of benchmark recordings with WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne featured Brahms, Mahler, Rachmaninov, Shostakovich, Strauss, Verdi, Glanert and Höller. Bychkov’s 1993 recording of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin with the Orchestre de Paris continues to win awards, most recently the Gramophone Collection 2021; Wagner’s Lohengrin was BBC Music Magazine’s Record of the Year (2010); and Schmidt’s Symphony No. 2 with the Vienna Philharmonic was BBC Music Magazine’s Record of the Month (2018).

In common with the Czech Philharmonic, Bychkov has one foot firmly in the culture of the East and the other in the West. Born in St Petersburg in 1952, he studied at the Leningrad Conservatory with the legendary Ilya Musin. Denied his prize of conducting the Leningrad Philharmonic, Bychkov emigrated to the United States in 1975 and, has lived in Europe since the mid-1980’s. In 1989, the same year he was named Music Director of the Orchestre de Paris, Bychkov returned to the former Soviet Union as the St Petersburg Philharmonic’s Principal Guest Conductor. He was appointed Chief Conductor of the WDR Symphony Orchestra (1997) and Chief Conductor of Dresden Semperoper (1998).

Franz Schubert (1797–1828) made several attempts at symphonic music early in his youth while he was a pupil at a Stadtkonvikt school. His first completed symphony dates from 1813; within the next five years it was followed by five other symphonies. The period between 1818 and 1822 was a time of searching for expression, which resulted in fragments only – if we include the two-movement Symphony in D minor nicknamed “Unfinished”; his posthumously discovered “Great” C major Symphony was created in the years 1825–1826. The numbering of Schubert’s symphonies is still an issue. As a “fragment”, the “Unfinished” Symphony was initially numbered as the Eighth, but later it was called No. 7 in chronological order. However, some researchers have recently assigned No. 7 to the reconstructed symphonic fragment in E major (D 729) and so there is no clearly defined order. This is not the only question associated with the “Unfinished” Symphony. The title page of the autograph bears the date of 30 October 1822 as the day of commencement of the composition. The manuscript contains two movements in full score and nine orchestrated measures of the third movement; for the next ten measures, the instruments are only indicated and the manuscript of the movement ends with the sixteenth measure of the trio. There are various hypotheses why Schubert left the work in progress. One of them finds a correlation between the symphony and Schubert’s being elected an honorary member of the Steiermärkischer Musikverein (Styrian Music Society) in Graz in 1823. Schubert thanked for this honor in writing and promised to send a new symphony (apparently attaching only the two completed movements), hoping that the society would perform it. When this did not happen, he put the work aside. Another interpretation refers to the above-mentioned period of search, considering it possible that Schubert decided to compose a symphony consisting of just two movements instead of the traditional four-movement form. The score reappeared forty years later, being kept by Schubert’s friend Anselm Hüttenbrenner, the chairman of the Styrian Music Society appointed in 1825. Thirty years after that (in 1865), Hüttenbrenner handed the score over to Johann Herbeck, the music director of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien (Society of Friends of Music in Vienna). The “Unfinished” Symphony was heard for the first time on 17 December 1865 in the Redoutensaal in Vienna under Herbeck’s direction, being called “a pearl of rare price” by one of the critics.

The “Unfinished” Symphony is the first known symphony in history composed in the B minor key. In 1806, Christian F. D. Schubart published his book Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst (Ideas on the Aesthetics of Music), dealing with psychological links of certain keys to the expression and mood of a musical piece. According to Schubart, “B minor is the key of patience, of calm awaiting one’s fate and of submission to divine dispensation”. Franz Schubert was undoubtedly familiar with Schubart’s book, and his choice of the key was clearly deliberate. The form of the first movement is completely new. Schubert skipped the slow introduction, characteristic of classical symphonies, while not giving up the principle: his symphony opens with a mysterious entrance of cellos and basses, joined by the other strings; the first theme, played by oboes and clarinets, appears in the thirteenth measure. The second theme is a stylized Austrian folk dance, Ländler, whose melody is again played by cello. The lyrical mood is suddenly interrupted by an orchestral tutti. In the development, Schubert’s music becomes dramatic; in the recapitulation, the mood of the exposition returns, but the second theme is kept in the parallel D major key, so there is no tonal unification. Another new feature is the similarity of the mood of the first and second movements. The second movement consists of two themes, variations of two-measure motifs. It is one of the most beautiful slow movements ever; its lyrical passages alternate with sudden eruptions, but in the end “the submission to divine dispensation” prevails overall. Sketches of the scherzo are at variance with the character of the completed movements, which Schubert must have felt, and decided that they could not – and should not be – bridged. What he has managed to say in two movements is sufficient, and the symphony seems to be a fully worked out composition.

To some extent, the “unfinished” state of Symphony in B minor can be explained by sketches, which were identified as sketches for Symphony in D major (D 936 A) as late as the 1970s. They come from 1828, and the fragment of the slow movement is perhaps Schubert’s last musical notation from the last few weeks of his life. There are 1027 bars in total left by Schubert in an almost pianistic form with occasional instrumental indications (short score). The movements are entitled Allegro maestoso, Andante and Scherzo, with a sketch of the third movement having two versions and a second sketch suggesting that Schubert meant it as the final movement. The analogy of searching for a form similar to that of the “Unfinished” is obvious, and therefore some researchers speak of a fantasia rather than a symphony. Although Schubert evidently started this composition emulating Beethoven’s pattern, he set out on the path leading to “the stage from Schubert to Mahler”.

In the years 1989–1990, Luciano Berio composed Rendering (1989) based on Schubert’s sketches for Symphony in D major for the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. Previously, there were several attempts to arrange these fragments, for example, by Peter Gülke (for orchestra), Rudi Leopold (for three cellos and a double bass) and Klaus Arp (for wind octet). Berio was not interested in a transcription or a paraphrase, or in a reconstruction or completion of the composition; he was not going to pretend to be Schubert. He compared practice to the work of art restorers who try to “improve” historical monuments and do irreparable damage to them. Berio said, “As I worked on Schubert’s sketches, I set myself the target of following those modern restoration criteria that aim at reviving the old colors without however trying to disguise the damage that time has caused, often leaving inevitable empty patches in the composition.” Berio used the same instrumentation as in the “Unfinished” Symphony, while trying to preserve Schubert’s color. The instrumental indications written by Schubert almost in shorthand had to be completed above all in the internal and bass parts. Berio felt that Schubert wanted to get away from Beethoven’s influence, and in the slow movement which impressed him the most he also recognized “Mahler’s spirit”. The gaps that exist between one sketch and another are connected by pianissimo passages, constantly different and changing, always announced by the sound of a celesta, intermingled with Schubert reminiscences. During his last days Schubert took lessons in counterpoint, and amongst his sketches for the Symphony in D major there is a brief counterpoint exercise, which Berio also orchestrated and integrated into the Andante. Schubert applied his study of counterpoint to the sketches for a scherzo and a finale. “These last sketches, although very fragmentary, are of great homogeneity and they show Schubert in the process of testing different contrapuntal possibilities for one and the same thematic material.” Berio sought to maintain the ambiguity in the structure of the movement. Two movements of Rendering were performed for the first time on 14 June 1989 by the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam under the direction of Nikolaus Harnoncourt, and on 19 April 1990 Riccardo Chailly gave the world premiere of the complete composition with the same orchestra and at the same place.

The nine symphonies by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) represent an unquestionable landmark in the evolution of this genre. While Beethoven’s predecessors Haydn and Mozart established the formal structure of the symphony, Beethoven followed from the inherited principle in each symphony, working it out in an individual way. The symphony finally became a complete work in terms of musical ideas; the significance of the sonata movement in the development increased as a result of the thematic work, and each symphony acquired an individual character. Beethoven began composing Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92, in October 1811; from April 1812 he worked on its full score. At the same time he began composing his Eighth Symphony, which he finished as early as October of the same year. He realized that the loss of his hearing was inevitable, and coped with this fact by hectic creativity. The circumstances of Beethoven’s private life during these two years are one of the greatest mysteries, not fully explained up to this day. In the summer months of 1812, Beethoven, suffering from rheumatic problems, went to West Bohemian spa towns. On his way there he stopped in Prague and from the beginning of July to the beginning of October he stayed in Teplice (Teplitz), Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad) and Františkovy Lázně (Franzensbad). He took the symphony in progress with him. The town of Karlovy Vary is connected with Beethoven’s letter to “the Immortal Beloved”; his memorable meeting with Johann Wolfgang Goethe took place in Teplice. Count Kinský, one of Beethoven’s patrons, died in an accident in November 1812, which together with the depreciation of the currency as a result of the Napoleonic Wars made Beethoven feel that he was now just a “poor Austrian musician”. Beethoven’s conflict with his brother Johann who, according to Beethoven, lived with a woman of questionable morals, and the illness of his other brother Karl were another of the many worries that plagued the composer. At the same time, both the Seventh and the Eighth are cheerful works, as if unaffected by external influences.

The Seventh Symphony was first performed in private in April 1813 in the residence of the Archduke Rudolf; the concert was prepared by Beethoven’s friend Mikuláš Zmeškal (Nikolaus Zmeskáll), a native of Leštiny (present-day Slovakia), and Antonín Vranický (Anton Wranitzky), a bandmaster at the court of Prince Lobkowicz. The work premiered on 8 December 1813 at a charity concert in the hall of the Vienna University together with Wellington’s Victory, or the Battle of Vittoria, Op. 91. This impressive piece of martial music was composed to celebrate Napoleon’s defeat in June the same year. The concert included musicians such as Louis Spohr, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Ignaz Moscheles and Antonio Salieri. It was organized by the inventor of music automatons, Johann Nepomuk Maelzel, who made hearing aids (ear trumpet) for Beethoven. The battle piece was received with much more enthusiasm than the Seventh Symphony. The successful concert was repeated on 12 December 1813, and immediately after the arrival of the New Year, Beethoven gave a benefit with the same program on 2 January 1814 in the Redoutensaal in Vienna. In the following season, on 29 November 1814, both compositions were performed together with the premiere of another piece of incidental music written by Beethoven for the opening of the Congress of Vienna, Der glorreiche Augenblick (The Glorious Moment). It was such a success that the whole program had to be reprised on 2 and 25 December, and according to Beethoven’s secretary and biographer, Anton Schindler, these were “the proudest days in Beethoven’s existence”. Beethoven dedicated the Seventh Symphony to Count Moritz von Fries, an industrialist and banker, who was a prominent collector and patron of the arts. However, his passion and eccentric life led to his bankruptcy, and Fries’s rise and fall even served as inspiration for Ferdinand Raimund’s play Der Verschwender’ (The Spendthrift). The popularity of the Seventh Symphony grew after its publication in 1816. Beethoven took advantage of the fame of this composition and reworked it for piano two and four hands, i.e., for two pianos; he dedicated these arrangements to the Empress Elizaveta (Elizabeth) Alexeyevna of Russia, born Princess Luise von Baden.

In Seventh Symphony, there is the pathos of the Fifth and the elemental joy of the Sixth. In the first movement we find both positions in a slow introduction and in the entrance of the main theme, whose syncopated rhythm gives rise to the following idea. The double variations of the second movement are a masterful sample of Beethoven’s thematic work; the trio in three sections features a melody of a pilgrim’s song common in Lower Austria. Richard Wagner called the symphony an “apotheosis of the dance” probably primarily because of the elementary fury of its finale.