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Czech Philharmonic • Milan
Milan — Teatro alla Scala
A concert at Teatro alla Scala is a true celebration for the Czech Philharmonic. Only a select few orchestras are invited to perform symphonic programmes at this iconic Milanese temple of opera. The orchestra's appearances there have been rare: Karel Ančerl etched two memorable performances into its history, and now Chief Conductor Semyon Bychkov will add a second mark of his own. The programme will include works by Mendelssohn, Ravel, and Stravinsky.
Programme
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
Symphony No. 4 in A major, Op. 90 “Italian”
Maurice Ravel
Piano Concerto in G major
Igor Stravinsky
Pulcinella, a concert performance of the ballet music
Performers
Beatrice Rana piano
Stefanie Irányi soprano
Eric Finbarr Carey tenor
Jongmin Park bass
Semyon Bychkov conductor
Czech Philharmonic
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Performers
Beatrice Rana piano
“I was seven years old the first time I attended an orchestra concert. I was so enchanted by Haydn that I got goosebumps. That was the first time I sensed what a powerful means of communication music represents”, recalls the pianist Beatrice Rana, who herself appeared as a soloist with orchestra just a year after that turning point in her life. Her life was filled with music from birth: she grew up in a family of pianists and begin playing piano at age four. Although no one pushed a musical career on her, she decided to study at the Nina Rota Conservatoire in Monopoli under the guidance of Benedetto Lupo, and she also attended a composition course taught by Marco della Sciucca. Her desire to improve her skill as a pianist took her to Hannover for studies with Arie Vardi, then back to Italy to study under Benedetto Lupo, this time at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia.
She came to the attention of musicians worldwide at age 18 by winning the Montreal International Competition and especially two years later in 2013, earning the silver medal and the audience prize at the famed Van Cliburn International Competition. Although that success launched her career on the world’s concert stages (mainly in America—she had already been giving concerts in Europe), it also gave her a feeling of great responsibility. She once revealed in an interview that for a whole season after the competition, she was living with the feeling that she had to prove herself deserving of her competition success. However, she overcame the crisis: “Suddenly I realised that I was no longer in the world of competitions, but one of concerts. And that is something much better.” Today, we can hear her at the most famous concert venues, from Royal Albert Hall to Carnegie Hall. She has played at the BBC Proms and, for example, at the Verbier Festival. She has appeared with such conductors as Yannick Nézet-Seguin, with whom she issued an album of piano concertos by Clara and Robert Schumann last year, Manfred Honeck, Paavo Järvi, and Antonio Pappano. It is with the latter that she has long collaborated with both in concert and on recordings (Rana is an exclusive Warner Classics recording artist). Their first recording with piano concertos by Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky was honoured as the “Editor’s Choice” by the magazine Gramophone and as “Newcomer of the Year” by the BBC Music Magazine. Her solo recordings have also earned awards: her Goldberg Variations (2017) won prizes for “Young Artist of the Year” (Gramophone) and “Discovery of the Year” (Edison), and the album of Stravinsky and Ravel won the Diapason d’Or and the Choc de l’Année Classica.
Beatrice Rana is acclaimed for the delicacy of her touch, her naturalness, and her intelligence. “To me, she is a revelation. Her level of musical maturity and technical security is amazing for such a young person”, says Antonio Pappano, describing the quality of the 31-year-old pianist’s playing, which the Prague public already experienced at the Rudolf Firkušný Festival in 2019, when Beatrice Rana intoxicated the Rudolfinum in a programme including Chopin etudes.
Her artistic career does not stop at the piano, however: in 2017 in Lecce, her birthplace at the heart of Apulia, she established the chamber music festival “Classiche Forme”, which soon took its place among Italy’s leading summer events. She is also the artist director of the Orchestra Filarmonica di Benevento. She currently lives in Rome.
Stefanie Irányi soprano
Eric Finbarr Carey
Jongmin Park bass
Jongmin Park, South Korean bass and native of Seoul, studied singing at the Korea National University of Arts. As a member of the Academy of La Scala, he was guided by Mirella Freni, Luciana Serra, Luigi Alva, and Renato Bruson.
Between 2010-2013 seasons, he was a member of the ensemble at the Hamburg State Opera where he sang leading roles such as Sarastro, Colline, Sparafucile.
From the 2013-14 season, he was invited to join the ensemble at the Vienna State Opera where he performed the roles of Sir Giorgio (I Puritani), Vodník (Rusalka), Ramfis, Gremin, Basilio.
In 2014 he debuted at the ROH Covent Garden as Colline, and appeared at the BBC Proms in London and at the City of London Festival 2014.
He won the International Tchaikovsky Competition, the Song Prize winner at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World 2015 and the Birgit Nilsson Wagner-Award at the Operalia.
His concert engagements have included Beethoven’s Symphony Nr. 9 with the London Symphony Orchestra, Mozart’s Vesperae solennes de Confessore at La Scala’s annual Christmas concert, Mozart’s Requiem at the Lech Classic Festival, Verdi’s Messa da Requiem with the KBS Symphony in Seoul, and Rossini’s Stabat Mater with the NHK Symphony in Tokyo.
He has performed solo recitals in Munich, Frankfurt and the Musikverein in Vienna. He will make his Wigmore Hall debut in 2017.
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
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
Symphony No. 4 in A Major (“Italian”), Op. 90
“My little room is now furnished, pictures hanging: Sebastian Bach above the piano, next to him Beethoven, and then several Raphaels – the decoration of the walls is quite varied. I also have a dressing table, with a bottle of eau de cologne, which all my aunts and cousins so admire. And then a tiny basket containing my three travel journals,” thus wrote Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809–1847) in 1832 after returning to Berlin from a two-year journey to England, Scotland and Italy. Having Bach and Beethoven portraits in his apartment attests to the young composer’s musical loves and idols, while reproductions of Raphael’s paintings served to recollect his impressions of Italy. Mendelssohn’s keen interest in the history of art was kindled within the intellectual milieu in which he grew up. He was born in Hamburg, yet when he was three his family moved to Berlin in fear of Napoleon Bonaparte’s army. His grandfather, Moses Mendelssohn, was a renowned philosopher, a leading cultural figure who played a considerable role in the emancipation of Jews in German society. Felix’s father, the banker and art lover Abraham Mendelssohn renounced Judaism and converted to Protestantism, and also formally adopted another surname, Bartholdy. A musician herself, Felix’s mother Lea eagerly supported and nurtured her children’s talent. Felix grew up in a family romantically enchanted by Nature, poetry and music. He began composing at the time when music was perceived as capable of telling stories, conveying ideas and rendering impressions. Fully embracing this approach, his extensive oeuvre includes 12 early string symphonies, as well as five mature symphonies for full orchestra, combining the historical legacy with the Romantic sentiment of his time. Although not programme works, they clearly reflect Mendelssohn’s personal experience.
The most noteworthy of the mature symphonies are the third, the “Scottish”, and the fourth, the “Italian”, both inspired by the composer’s youthful travels. Mendelssohn began conceiving Symphony No. 4 in A major, Op. 90, the “Italian”, during his almost two-year sojourn in Italy, starting in May 1830. Carrying with him the travel diaries of Johann Wolfgang Goethe, who travelled through the country between 1786 and 1788, he visited Rome, Naples, Pompeii, Genoa, Milan, Venice, Florence and other places. In a letter to his sister Fanny, dated 22 February 1831, Mendelssohn wrote that he had been composing intensively, completing the cantata Die erste Walpurgisnacht (The First Walpurgis Night), based on Goethe’s eponymous poem, adding that: “The Italian symphony is making great progress. It will be the most joyous piece I have ever done, the final movement in particular. I have not found anything for the adagio yet, and I think that I will save that for Naples.” He also pointed out: “Yet I still cannot get a grip on the Scottish symphony. Should during this time a good idea occur, I will snatch it, note it down presently and finish it.” Mendelssohn gave a secondary name to both symphonies. Completed in 1833, the Italian was performed on 13 May that year in London by the London Philharmonic Society, with the composer conducting. Not entirely satisfied with the work, Mendelssohn made revisions, yet he deemed none of them definitive, and so the piece exists in several versions. Chronologically, the Italian is actually his third symphony, as the composer only finished the Scottish in 1842, when it also received its premiere. The Italian was first published, posthumously, in 1851, thus having a higher number.
The first movement, in sonata form, reveals Mendelssohn as an innovator of the conventional conception. As against the bold main theme, the subsidiary theme is rather a mere episode, yet the development includes a third, contrapuntal, theme, attesting to the composer’s admiration of the Baroque masters. Created in response to the death of Mendelssohn’s teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter (1758–1832), as well as his beloved J. W. Goethe (1749–1832), the second movement too can be considered to be in sonata form, albeit without a development. The third movement is a minuet, while the finale incorporates the vivacious Saltarello, an Italian folk dance in 6/8 time.
Maurice Ravel
Piano Concerto in G major
Maurice Ravel did not leave behind a large musical legacy. Some biographers claim this was because of the composer’s other activities—he was also working as a concert pianist, a conductor, and a teacher. Others say it was his meticulousness and the exacting standards he set for himself. He wrote a number of individual compositions and cycles of pieces for his own instrument, the piano, including music for solo piano, for piano four-hands, and for two pianos. He also wrote two piano concertos, both during his late creative period, composing them simultaneously between 1929 and 1931. The Piano Concerto in D major for the left hand was written on commission for the one-handed pianist Paul Wittgenstein (1887–1961), who had also asked other composers of his day to write works for his repertoire.
In his Piano Concerto in G major, Ravel employed a variety of stylistic resources ranging from Spanish folk elements to the jazz influences of his day. He conceived the orchestral accompaniment in an original manner, giving various instruments room to play solo passages. The two outer movements contrast effectively with the melancholy central Adagio. The first movement in sonata form surprisingly repeats material from the development section after the recapitulation and cadenza. The slow movement opens with a long piano solo, with wind instruments taking up the theme one after another. The theme itself has been compared to that of the slow movement of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet. The winds also play a major role in the orchestration of the rondo finale.
Ravel expected that, as with other works he had written, he would himself be the concerto’s first performer: “It was an interesting experience to work on both concertos at the same time. The one I will be playing myself is a concerto in the true sense of the word. What I mean is that it is written in the spirit of Mozart and Saint-Saëns. In my opinion, the music of a solo concerto has to be light and brilliant, and it should not strive for depth or for dramatic effects”, he wrote. However, problems with Ravel’s health prevented him from playing the piano part. The concerto was premiered on 14 January 1932 with Marguerite Long as the soloist and with Ravel leading the orchestra. The two artists then embarked on a four-month tour, during which they also played the new concerto on 18 February 1932 at a philharmonic concert of the New German Theatre in Prague: “A delicately crafted, polished composition full of spirit, taste, and precision, and a work of art clear as crystal, elegant, and lively”, wrote a Prague critic. “The piano part allows for both mechanistic playing and Lisztian virtuosity, though musicality is required above all in the difficult harmonic passages.” The audience even insisted that the final movement be repeated.
Igor Stravinsky
Pulcinella, a concert performance of the ballet music