Czech Philharmonic • Season Opening Concerts

Janine Jansen was born to a Dutch family. Her father, an organist, pianist, and harpsichord player, and her mother, a singer, taught music to all their children from an early age. Little Janine sang in the church choir and began playing the violin at age six under the guidance of the famed pedagogue Coosje Wijzenbeek and making music with her father and brothers. “There was no escaping music at home; life without it was unthinkable,” she recalls. She also witnessed the rehearsals of early music ensembles because some of the biggest names in the field of historically informed interpretation in those days were among her family’s friends, and that had such an influence on her that there was even a time when she played with a Baroque bow and gut strings. Ultimately, however, she decided to go the “traditional” route and to pay her respects to historically informed interpretation in other ways (like by the style of her phrasing), and that gives her playing a personal touch.

She made her debut at Amsterdam’s famed Concertgebouw at age 15, and even the sudden death of Philippe Hirschhorn, her teacher at the time, could not stop her rise to fame. Another teacher, Boris Belkin, followed, and shortly after her 20th birthday, she launched her international career and began making recordings on the Decca Classics label. Since her Vivaldi recording, which broke sales records, she has become famous all around the world.

For years now, top musical ensembles have been vying for her attention. In March 2024 at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the inaugural Janine Jansen Bach Festival will take place, at which the violin superstar will play roles in planning the programmes and performing. Besides the traditional repertoire, this season also features contemporary music including the double concerto Distans by the English composer Sally Beamish and the world premiere of a violin concerto by Britta Byström. There is also plenty of touring squeezed into her busy schedule. The longest tour is to the Far East with the Oslo Philharmonic and Klaus Mäkelä, but there will be plenty of appearances in Europe as well. One tour includes an appearance with the London Symphony Orchestra led by Sir Antonio Pappano, with whom she has a long history of professional friendship.

Under his baton, Janine Jansen has make recordings including works by Brahms and Bartók, but they came into even closer contact when she made her latest CD titled “12 Stradivari”, a recording that the journal Gramophone even called “a beautiful testament to her very special musical friendship with Pappano”. Jansen came up with the truly original idea of creating a kind of study of twelve Stradivarius violins, presenting them in the repertoire for which those instruments were the inspiration, the goal being to let the outstanding qualities of each instrument come to the fore. And she invited none other than her “old friend” Pappano to accompany her at the piano. 

Besides Pappano, Jansen also works closely with the pianist Denis Kozhukhin, with whom she will be appearing in December at Wigmore Hall as the season’s artist-in-residence, and she is playing in a trio established with Martha Argerich and Mischa Maisky. She already got a taste of chamber music at home as a child, and her teacher Coosje Wijzenbeek strongly fostered that interest. Chamber music has had an indispensable place in her career, as is also shown by the International Chamber Music Festival Utrecht, which has been under her artistic supervision from its founding until what is now its 20th season.

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).