Czech Philharmonic • Saitama
The Czech Philharmonic first ventured to Asia on a legendary tour in 1959. Since then, it has returned as often as every two years whenever possible. In fact, the orchestra has already performed 373 concerts in Japan. It discovered South Korea in the 1990s and made its debut in Taiwan in 2019. This time, the programme will feature works by Ravel, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, Smetana, and Dvořák, led by Chief Conductor Semyon Bychkov.
Programme
Antonín Dvořák
Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64
Performers
Anastasia Kobekina cello
Semyon Bychkov conductor
Czech Philharmonic
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Performers
Anastasia Kobekina cello
“When I was about six or seven, my grandma wasn’t feeling well, and there was a tense atmosphere at home. I remember getting everybody out of her room, closing the door, and starting to play a piece I had just learned. That was the moment I realized that one can say more with music than with the words,” recalls cellist Anastasia Kobekina, who has gained international renown not only for her technique and distinctive musicality, but also for her charismatic presence both on and off the concert stage. She was born into a Russian musical family—her mother was a pianist and her father a composer—so the path to music was completely natural for her. She chose the cello herself after attending a concert by Natalia Gutman at the age of three and a half. “I want to play this instrument!” she declared at the time. She thus began learning the cello at just four years old and enjoyed giving home concerts for her parents. At eighteen, she left to study in Germany, first at the Kronberg Academy, where she studied under Frans Helmerson, and then at the Universität der Kunste in Berlin (Jens-Peter Maintz). She further developed her playing skills in France – at the Paris Conservatory with Jerome Pernoo and at the Frankfurter Hochschule with Kristin von der Goltz (baroque cello).
She made a name for herself among audiences and organizers primarily through awards from major performance competitions, such as the International Tchaikovsky Competition and the Enescu Competition; we certainly also took note of her among the semifinalists of perhaps the world’s most prestigious competition, the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels. Between 2018 and 2021, she was invited to join the “BBC New Generation Artist” program, which helps young, talented emerging artists establish themselves. A recipient of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award and the Leonard Bernstein Award, she now performs in major concert halls (the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Konzerthaus in Berlin, Lincoln Center) and at festivals—in 2023, for example, she opened Dvořák Prague with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra and Paavo Järvi. She also collaborates with renowned conductors and orchestras. The Czech Philharmonic recently joined this list, with Kobekina becoming part of its tour in the summer of 2024. Under the baton of Jakub Hrůša, she made her debut at the BBC Proms. This significant year, which also saw the release of her debut album “Venice” (Kobekina records exclusively for Sony Classical), can now be relived by listeners through the documentary “Jetzt oder nie!”, filmed by the German broadcaster ARD.
Her latest album from 2025 features the complete set of Bach’s six cello suites; she subsequently performed this work in the spring of 2026 in Berlin as part of the multi-genre project Bach Cello Dance, where she shared the stage with the acclaimed choreographer and dancer Sasha Waltz.
She already has some experience with Bryce Dessner’s work—she recorded two of his compositions for solo cello, Tuusula and Song for Ainola, which became part of Dessner’s album Solos (released in 2024). His music speaks to her, and she enjoys not only its emotional depth but also a certain rock edge; Dessner, in turn, admires her playing skills and her character. “In such difficult times, both culturally and politically, it’s wonderful that there is such a positive person with a clear mind,” Dessner adds in her regard.
Semyon Bychkov conductor
In addition to conducting at Prague’s Rudolfinum, Semyon Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic in the 2023/2024 season, took the all Dvořák programmes to Korea and across Japan with three concerts at Tokyo’s famed Suntory Hall. In spring, an extensive European tour took the programmes to Spain, Austria, Germany, Belgium, and France and, at the end of year 2024, the Year of Czech Music culminated with three concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York.
Among the significant joint achievements of Semyon Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic is the release of a 7-CD box set devoted to Tchaikovsky’s symphonic repertoire and a series of international residencies. In 2024, Semjon Byčkov with the Czech Philharmonic concentrated on recording Czech music – a CD was released with Bedřich Smetanaʼs My Homeland and Antonín Dvořákʼs last three symphonies and ouvertures.
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 awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in July 2022. 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).
Semyon 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).
Compositions
Antonín Dvořák
Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s brother Modest wrote that in the course of 1888, the composer’s “boldest dreams of fame were realised”. He had attained prosperity and universal esteem such as few composers enjoy in their lifetimes. “In his distrustfulness and modesty, he never stops being amazed and delighted that both abroad and in Russia, he receives more recognition than he could have expected. [...] He makes the impression of worldly happiness, and yet he his unhappier than ever before.” Tchaikovsky tried to escape his soul’s inner turmoil by busying himself with conducting engagements that were taking him from city to city and from one country to the next. “The thrill a composer feels when conducting an excellent orchestra playing his music with love and devotion was a new joy for me”, the composer confided. Prague was one of the cities where he received a real ovation: “From the first moment of my arrival, there were countless celebrations, visits, rehearsals, sightseeing etc. They were welcoming me as if I were a representative not of Russian music, but of all of Russia.” Tchaikovsky spent that summer working on his Fifth Symphony. Self-doubt never left him, however. “I want to work diligently to prove to myself and others that I have not yet completely written myself out. Doubts often come to me, and I wonder: is it not time for me to quit? Have I not yet exhausted my imagination?”, he wrote to his patroness Nadezhda von Meck.
There is no doubt that Tchaikovsky’s last three symphonies are works with programmatic subtexts, although there is no specific “plot” to speak of. The Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64, is built on the principle employed by Hector Berlioz in his pioneering Symphonie fantastique. Berlioz lets a single musical idea (idée fixe) run through the entire composition in various transformations, symbolising the composer’s beloved, his future wife Harriet Smithson. At the same time that Tchaikovsky was writing his Fifth Symphony, César Franck employed this same principle in his only symphonic work, the Symphony in D minor, likewise without assigning any concrete meaning to the unifying theme. The clarinet presents the central idea of Tchaikovsky’s penultimate symphony, a gloomy “fate” motif, in the introduction to the first movement. The composer merely hinted at the symphony’s programmatic content. About the first movement, he wrote: “Introduction – complete submission to fate. Allegro – dissatisfaction, doubts, complaints, reproaches”. In the second movement, fate yields to brighter tones, but it is not defeated, and its ominous presence makes itself felt even in the third movement, a light-hearted waltz. The fourth movement again opens with the “fate” motif, this time more distinctively structured, evoking a ceremonial atmosphere. This leads to conciliation expressed by the music of a majestic march, and in its ponderous strides, the burden of fate becomes an inherent part of existence. The struggle is not over, however; it leads to a new surge of energy as the symphony concludes at a fast tempo.
Tchaikovsky conducted the premiere of his Symphony No. 5 on 17 November 1888 in Saint Petersburg. It was a familiar scene for the composer: the audience responded with thunderous applause, while the critics remained divided, some calling the work a routine composition calculated for effect, while others hailed it as one of the most accomplished works of its era.