Czech Philharmonic • Semyon Bychkov
Forget about the composers! That would fulfil a long-held wish of Detlev Glanert, who dreams of a programme in which the names of neither composers nor soloists are mentioned at all. To start the evening, you will hear the trumpeter Walter Hofbauer; after intermission, Semyon Bychkov will conduct his favourite, Rachmaninoff. But hush!
Programme
Detlev Glanert
Trumpet Concerto (2018)
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27
Performers
Walter Hofbauer trumpet
Semyon Bychkov conductor
Czech Philharmonic
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Detlev Glanert regards live music as an irreplaceable, magical merger of the energy flowing between the audience and the performers. According to him, the composer is a medium through whom the world passes, who at a certain point should disappear behind the work, making space for shared experience. Once the music has ended, listeners can remember the composer again.
Semyon Bychkov, for many years a friend of Detlev Glanert, regularly remembers the composer when planning programmes. In 2022, the chief conductor of the Czech Philharmonic led a performance at the Rudolfinum of Glanert’s Prague Symphony, written on commission for Maestro Bychkov. According to Glanert, no composer could ask for a better or more conscientious advocate for their works. He also speaks highly of his collaborations with the orchestra players: “My experience with the Czech Philharmonic has been truly remarkable: they don’t just play new music accurately—they bring out its soul, its very essence.”
A significant part of Semyon Bychkov’s journey has been shaped by his lifelong interest in Sergei Rachmaninoff, dating back to his childhood: “I played his piano music, I read everything I could find on him, including his letters. It was an obsession. And then I found myself at the Leningrad Conservatory, the youngest of all the conductors, and the other students were looking at me as if I was a baby brother. And they told me, very nicely, that one day I would grow out of my love of Rachmaninoff. I could never understand why I would want to!!”
Maestro Bychkov’s favourite compositions by Rachmaninoff include the Second Symphony (1907), “which of course is a very different Rachmaninoff, a young man with absolutely crazy talent. The orchestration is extraordinary: everything is overblown, yet I don’t care, because I think a man of that age is supposed to overdo things. It would be a pity to see someone so young acting old and wise. Yet when he did write, he was absolutely clear how he wanted music to be, regardless of what anyone else was doing. I’m full of admiration for that, because it takes a lot of courage.”
Performers
Walter Hofbauer trumpet
At the age of 26, the trumpeter Walter Hofbauer has already captivated music critics with his outstanding artistic performances and to achieve exceptional results and recognition. He comes from the Czech town Třešť and was raised in a musical family. At age 8 he began studying trumpet with Evžen Mašát, and he soon won first prize at several nationwide competitions. In September 2009 he entered Jiří Jaroněk’s studio at the Prague Conservatoire, and he soon became the overall winner of the conservatoire competition. Already as a second-year student, he played first trumpet in the orchestra of the Prague Conservatoire at the opening concert of the Prague Spring Festival under the baton of Jiří Bělohlávek, the chief conductor of the Czech Philharmonic. Two years later, he won the audition for the Orchestral Academy of the Czech Philharmonic. He graduated from the conservatoire in 2015, and that same year he was admitted to the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, where he continued his studies under the guidance of Vladimír Rejlek. As a laureate of the Concertino Praga International Radio Competition, he appeared at the Rudolfinum as a soloist with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, and he became a full-time member of that orchestra in 2014. Since the 2017/2018 he has also been a member of the Orchestra of the National Theatre.
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).