Interview: Semyon Bychkov: his own man

Semyon Bychkov has rather unspectacularly become one of the world’s most sought after conductors, and at present he is in London to conduct a series of performances of Wagner’s now least often staged canonical opera, Tannhäuser, at the Royal Opera House.

Semyon Bychkov has rather unspectacularly become one of the world’s most sought after conductors, and at present he is in London to conduct a series of performances of Wagner’s now least often staged canonical opera, Tannhäuser, at the Royal Opera House.

He was trained in St Petersburg, at that time Leningrad, by the apparently legendary Ilya Musin; but at least as important was the long-time chief conductor of the Leningrad Philharmonic, Yevgeny Mravinsky, an old-style orchestral tyrant, the sensational results of whose leadership can still be heard in many recordings. Bychkov felt constrained, oppressed in the Soviet Union, and was allowed to leave in 1975, going to the United States via Vienna and Rome. He conducted first student orchestras, then fairly famous US ones, until he returned to Europe in 1983, and was soon conducting the Royal Concertgebouw.

In 1985 he made his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic, replacing first Riccardo Muti and then Eugen Jochum. It was the time when Karajan was at loggerheads with the orchestra he had led for so long, and physically failing. Asked who he would like to succeed him, he said, first, Carlos Kleiber, a supreme conductor famous partly for the extreme rarity of his performances (he gave 96 concerts in a long life) and his tiny repertoire; and next Bychkov, whose name meant little to most music lovers at the time.

Since then, Bychkov has conducted virtually all the world’s great orchestras, and has appeared in many opera houses. His repertoire is wide, but with odd exceptions, such as a few performances of Bach’s Mass in B minor, he has concentrated on romantic and modern works, with Russian, German and Italian music predominating.