Czech Philharmonic • Madrid
The second concert in Madrid again begins with music by Bedřich Smetana. Following excerpts from The Bartered Bride are Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, Mao Fujita will take his seat at the piano for Richard Strauss’s Burleske.
Programme
Bedřich Smetana
Overture, Furiant, and Dance of the Comedians from the opera The Bartered Bride
Richard Strauss
Burleske in D minor for piano and orchestra
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Symphonic Dances, Op. 45
Performers
Mao Fujita piano
Semyon Bychkov conductor
Czech Philharmonic
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Performers
Mao Fujita piano
With an innate musical sensitivity and naturalness to his artistry, 26-year old pianist Mao Fujita has already impressed many leading musicians as one of those special talents which come along only rarely, equally at home in Mozart as the major romantic repertoire.
Born in Tokyo, he began piano lessons at the age of five and won his first international prize in 2010 at the World Classic in Taiwan. While still studying at the Tokyo College of Music in 2017, he took First Prize at the prestigious Concours International de Piano Clara Haskil in Switzerland, which brought him to the attention of the international music community for the first time. He was also the Silver Medalist at the 2019 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.
Fujita has been invited to appear in recital at major international festivals and made US recital debut at Carnegie Hall in January 2023. Recent orchestral highlights include performances with the Gewandhausorchester, Munich Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic or Royal Concertgebouw. In November 2021, Fujita signed an exclusive multi-album deal with Sony Classical International (Mozart’s complete piano sonatas, 72 Preludes by Chopin, Scriabin, and Yashiro). He is a member of Konzerthaus Dortmund’s series "Junge Wilde" from the 24/25 season.
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
Bedřich Smetana
Overture, Furiant, and Dance of the Comedians from the opera The Bartered Bride
Richard Strauss
Burleske in D minor for piano and orchestra
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Symphonic Dances, Op. 45
A graduate of the Moscow Conservatory, Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff created mostly in the 20th century, but his music – influenced mainly by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – remains firmly rooted in the late Romantic style. Rachmaninoff himself commented on this: “I cannot cast out the old way of writing and I cannot acquire the new. I have made an intense effort to feel the musical manner of today, but it will not come to me.” Although he composed three operas, an equal number of symphonies, several sacred works, and a number of remarkable songs, he is best known for his piano works, which include four concertos and a number of solo pieces. Rachmaninoff, himself an accomplished pianist, performed with success not only in his homeland but also in Europe and on the American continent. He was also active as a conductor, first in Moscow, where he conducted operas by Glinka and Tchaikovsky at the Bolshoi Theatre, then in Dresden from 1906 to 1909, before making his first major concert tour to the United States. Rachmaninoff did not accept the regime established after the Great October Socialist Revolution in 1917, and soon afterwards left his homeland permanently. He first lived in Europe and in 1935 settled in the United States, where he developed a rich concert career and continued to compose. Although he privately and publicly criticized the Soviet regime, he bore the separation from Russia very hard; his family maintained Russian customs, surrounded themselves with Russian friends, and hired Russian servants. In exile, Rachmaninoff was an ardent patriot, which was especially evident after the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany, when he donated his concert fees to support the Red Army. He died in California just four days before his 70th birthday.
His very last composition is Symphonic Dances, Op. 45, composed in 1940. Rachmaninoff gave the individual movements of this three-movement work titles seemingly indicating the times of day (Noon – Twilight – Midnight), but in reality it is probably a metaphor related to the stocktaking at the end of his life, when he was already very ill. Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, whose instrumental embellishments include the use of the alto saxophone as a solo instrument in the first movement, have been choreographed for ballet on several occasions, but more often they are performed as a stand-alone symphonic piece that can make an emotional impact in its own right.