Czech Philharmonic
Semyon Bychkov, Chief Conductor & Music Director
SPRING 2022 EUROPEAN TOUR:
Vienna, Berlin, Hamburg, Essen and London
Announcing its first international tour since the final concerts of The Tchaikovsky Project, the Czech Philharmonic will give 10 concerts with Chief Conductor and Music Director Semyon Bychkov in Austria, Germany and the UK in spring 2022. The tour kicks off on 3 March with a 3-concert residency at the Vienna Musikverein where the Czech Philharmonic have been invited to present a Festival of Czech Music. Opening with Smetana’s iconic symphonic cycle Má vlast (My Homeland), Viennese audiences will be treated to music from well-known and lesser-known Czech composers, Dvořák, Martinů, Janáček and Kabeláč,performed alongside works by Ullmann who was born in Těšín, now part of the Czech Republic, and Stravinsky. For the Stravinsky, which will also form part of the programme at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie (10 March) and London’s Barbican Centre (15 & 16 March), Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic will be joined by Yuja Wang, the Orchestra’s 2021-22 Artist-in-Residence.
The Czech Philharmonic opened its 126th season with two performances of Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony conducted by Semyon Bychkov, before turning their attention to Symphony Nos. 1 and 9 by Gustav Mahler, part of an ongoing symphonic cycle that will be recorded over the next four years. Just last week on 17 November, Principal Guest Conductor Jakub Hrůša conducted the second annual Velvet Revolution concert featuring music by Janáček and Lutosławski alongside Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto with soloist Lukáš Vondráček which was recorded and broadcast by Czech Philharmonic’s own state-of-the-art producing house Czech Phil Media for Czech TV, Czech Radio and Arte TV.
Elsewhere this season new music takes centre stage with performances of three works whose commissions were initiated by Bychkov at the start of his tenure with the Czech Philharmonic in 2018: on 1 December, Jakub Hrůša will conduct the world première of Czech composer Slavomír Hořínka’s Rejoice III; on 15 December, Bychkov will conduct the Czech première of Bryce Dessner’s Mari first heard in Zurich earlier this year; and on 20 April, Bychkov will conduct the Czech première of British composer Julian Anderson’s Second Symphony Prague Panoramas inspired by the photographs of Josef Sudek. On 9 February, Principal Guest Conductor Tomáš Netopil will celebrate the 300th anniversary of Czech composer Jiří Antonín Bendaby conducting a rare performance of his melodrama Medea.