Semyon Bychkov

Bychkov’s tenure as Chief Conductor and Music Director of the Czech Philharmonic – Gramophone’s Orchestra of the Year 2024 – was initiated with concerts in Prague, London, New York, and Washington celebrating the 100th anniversary of Czechoslovak independence. The following year marked the culmination of The Tchaikovsky Project: concerts, residencies and recordings of Tchaikovsky’s symphonies with the Orchestra both at home and on tour. For 2024’s Year of Czech Music, Czech composers were given pride of place and, in addition to recordings of Smetana’s Má vlast – voted by BBC Music Magazine as Orchestral Recording of the Year 2025 – and Dvorak’s Symphonies 7, 8 and 9, Czech music was at the centre of extensive European tours and concerts in the US, including three concerts at Carnegie Hall.  This season, as well as subscription concerts in Prague, Bychkov will tour with the Orchestra to Taiwan, Japan. Korea, Austria, Italy, Germany, Luxemburg, Sweden and Finland and, in Spring 2026, PENTATONE will release the complete cycle of Mahler symphonies recorded with the Orchestra over the past 8 seasons.

Bychkov brings a unique combination of innate musicality and rigorous Russian pedagogy to a repertoire that spans four centuries. He is a frequent guest with the leading international orchestras and opera companies and has recorded extensively including with the Berlin Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio, Concertgebouworkest, Philharmonia Orchestra, London Philharmonic and Orchestre de Paris. This season, he will conduct a new production of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin at the Paris Opera and return for concerts with the Concertgebouw, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Santa Cecilia, Berlin Philharmonic and New York Philharmonic amongst others.  Benchmark recordings with WDR Cologne include the four Brahms Symphonies, in addition to works by Strauss, Mahler, Shostakovich, Rachmaninov, Verdi, Glanert and Höller. His 1992 recording of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin was chosen by Opera magazine as one of 30 all-time great opera recordings, and the recommended recording for BBC’s Radio 3’s Building a Library (2020); 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).

In common with the Czech Philharmonic, Bychkov has one foot firmly in the culture of the East and the other in the West. Born in St Petersburg in 1952, he emigrated to the United States in 1975 and is now based in Europe. In 1989 Bychkov returned to the former Soviet Union as Principal Guest Conductor of the St Petersburg Philharmonic, and the same year was named Music Director of the Orchestre de Paris. In 1997, he was appointed Chief Conductor of the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, and in 1998, Chief Conductor of the Dresden Semperoper. He holds honorary titles with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Academy of Music. Bychkov was named “Conductor of the Year’ by the International Opera Awards in 2015 and, by Musical America in 2022.