Semyon Bychkov

The 2009/10 season marks Semyon Bychkov’s twelfth season as Chief Conductor of the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln with whom, in addition to a full concert season in Cologne, he has toured extensively and collaborated on a series of highly regarded recordings.  In this, his final season with the orchestra, Bychkov will conduct the orchestra in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Holland and the UK, giving his last concert in Cologne – Schönberg’s Verklärte Nacht and Act II of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde – in mid June.  

Bychkov’s season started in London with an extraordinary performance at the BBC Proms, and continued at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden where he conducted six performances of Verdi’s Don Carlo.  “Verdi has always been close to my heart,” says Semyon Bychkov, who recently conducted Verdi’s Otello at the New York Met, and Ballo in Maschera at the Paris Opera, and in 2008 recorded Verdi’s Requiem with the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln and soloists Furlanetto, Urmana, Borodina and Vargas.   

Bychkov’s guest appearances during the year include concerts in Germany with the Berlin and Munich Philharmonics; in the US with the San Francisco and Chicago Symphony Orchestras, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Cleveland Orchestra; in the UK with the London Symphony Orchestra; with the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Japan and the Filharmonica della Scala in Italy, as well as concert performances of Tannhäuser in Torino in the lead-up to conducting the work at Covent Garden in autumn 2010.  His relationship with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra dates back to the mid 80’s when, in the space of three weeks, he stepped in to replace Muti and Jochum.  Bychkov subsequently made five recordings with the Orchestra, including Shostakovich’s Symphonies Nos. 5, 8 and 11.

Shostakovich features strongly in Bychkov’s repertoire for the season.   He will conduct Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic; Symphony No. 7 with the Munich Philharmonic; Symphony No. 1 with WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln and with the NHK Symphony Orchestra; and the Second Piano Concerto with Denis Matsuev and the London Symphony Orchestra.  As the Sunday Times commented of Bychkov’s recent BBC Prom:

"Bychkov’s account of the Eleventh, was one of the most electrifying and shattering I have heard of a Shostakovich symphony in the concert hall, and the BBCSO responded to his visionary direction with playing they seem to reserve for very special conductors.  From the glacial evocation of the Winter Palace courtyard, via the shooting of the 1905 revolutionaries by the Tsar’s armed guard, to the climatic sounding of the tocsin, Bychkov never let the tension sag and was rewarded with a tumultuous, spontaneous ovation from both audience and orchestra.  What a great conductor he has become." 

The Sunday Times, 30 August 2009

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