Czech Philharmonic • Sheku Kanneh-Mason

Music was constantly playing at his family’s home in Nottingham. That was the childhood of one of today’s most sought-after young cellists worldwide and a member of the Order of the British Empire, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, whose parents selflessly supported not only his musical career, but also those of another six talented siblings. Today, however, Sheku is the best known of them, earning worldwide fame in 2016 thanks to the competition BBC Young Musician, which he won at just 17 years of age. Next came a performance at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, thanks to which he became famous in society beyond musical circles. 

And that is his musical creed: to perform music that is accessible to everyone. For this reason, he can now be heard at famed concert venues from Wigmore Hall in London to New York’s Carnegie Hall as well as, for example, at school halls playing for children. During the lockdown in the spring of 2020, he and his siblings gave live concert broadcasts from their home in Nottingham that were watched by hundreds of thousands of listeners from all around the world. This tied in with the public performances they gave in 2015, having been successful participants on the television show Britain’s Got Talent. That is where they were called “probably the world’s most talented musical family”. Their mother Kadiatu has written the book House of Music: Raising the Kanneh-Masons about their family life and the journey of all seven siblings to music.

Like his brothers and sisters, Sheku studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London (Hannah Roberts) and immediately upon graduating in 2022, he began working as the Academy’s first Menuhin Professor of Performance Mentoring. At the same time, his stellar career is filled with performances with such prestigious orchestras as the BBC Symphony Orchestras, the London Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, the New York Philharmonic, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and he gives world tours. For example, he opened the 2023/24 season by appearing at the concluding concert of the BBC Proms, and he was also heard in solo recitals in Canada and the USA, in a duo with the guitarist Plínio Fernandes, and with his sister, the pianist Isata. The duo of siblings is nothing new for audiences: they are heard not only in concert, but also on their joint album Song, his latest CD, following Inspiration (2018) and Elgar (2020), on which Sheku Kanneh-Mason presents a very personal selection of repertoire in a variety of genres (in both the works’ original forms and in arrangements). He attempts to take full advantage of the singing tone of his Matteo Goffriller cello from 1700.

Today, we hear him in Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto, which he has already played many times. He first performed it at the competition BBC Young Musicians, where the youthful cellist came away from the final round as the overall winner. Of his many performances of the work since then, worth mentioning was an appearance in October 2023, when he had a string break twice during the concert. The first time, he handled the situation by going backstage to replace the string, then the second time he borrowed a cello from a member of the cello section of the Orchestre de Paris, with which he as playing under Nathalie Stutzmann’s baton. Today is his first appearance with the Czech Philharmonic; his planned performance of Elgar’s concerto in January 2022 was cancelled because of the pandemic.

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, the Year of Czech Music 2024 will culminate 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).

Symfonie č. 44 e moll „Smuteční“ Hob I/44byla napsána v roce 1771, kdy Joseph Haydn působil na knížecím dvoře Esterházyů. Jako kapelník orchestru opatřoval dvůr svými kompozicemi, které měly udržovat krok s dobou. Ambiciózní uherská šlechta toužila po tom, aby v jejích nově postavených reprezentativních sídlech, jež se měla co nejvíce přiblížit lesku Versailles či Schönbrunnu, zněla svěží moderní hudba a Haydn se stal v tomto směru ideální volbou. Jeho služba, k níž patřila kromě komponování například také odpovědnost za členy orchestru, péče o nástroje a hudební knihovnu, se nakonec protáhla na třicet let. Kladnou úlohu v tom jistě sehrálo nejen štěstí, ale i skladatelova nekonfliktní, laskavá, skoro až otcovská povaha. Ve stáří na tuto životní etapu vzpomínal s vděčností: „Můj kníže byl spokojen se všemi mými pracemi, zakoušel jsem potlesk, jako vedoucí orchestru jsem mohl dělat pokusy, pozorovat, co způsobuje účinek a co ho tlumí, také vylepšovat, přidávat, škrtat, vážit. Byl jsem odloučen od světa, nikdo v mé blízkosti až na mne samého mě nemohl vztekat a zlobit, a tak jsem se musel stát originálním.“

Dnes si tvorbu Josepha Haydna spojujeme zejména se symfoniemi a smyčcovými kvartety, v nichž se projevil jako odvážný experimentátor. V 70. letech 18. století se věnoval tvorbě symfonií, které myšlenkově spojil s citovým hnutím Sturm und Drang (Bouře a vzdor). Projevilo se to v upřednostňování mollových tónin, kontrastnější dynamice, rytmické naléhavosti a v použití barokního kontrapunktu. Většinu z těchto prvků najdeme také v Symfonii č. 44 e moll „Smuteční“, ať už je to úvodní motiv neklidné první věty Allegro con brio, hlavní část druhé věty, která je kánonem v oktávě (hluboké smyčce nastupují s totožnou melodií jako housle, avšak o oktávu níž a o tři doby později), půvabně klidné Adagio nebo rozbouřené Finale věty závěrečné. K originalitě této skladby patří umístění Menuetu na pozici druhé věty (na svou dobu se jedná spíše o výjimku) a tóninová jednota: všechny věty jsou v hlavní tónině vyjma střední části Menuetu a věty třetí, které jsou napsány ve stejnojmenné tónině E dur.

Svůj nehudební název dostala symfonie snad přímo od Haydna, který si přál, aby pomalá věta tohoto díla zazněla při jeho pohřbu. Skutečnost byla ale nakonec jiná a při velkolepém smutečním obřadu se hrálo Requiem skladatelova mladšího přítele Wolfganga Amadea Mozarta.

In the early nineteenth century, Beethoven was known to the Viennese public mainly as a pianist and a skilled improviser, but after the premiere of his Symphony No. 1. in C Major, he also began to earn a reputation as a composer. While composing his Symphony No. 2 (1801–1802), Beethoven was undergoing a crisis involving his physical condition. He was not healthy, and the problems had been manifesting themselves for several years. Without knowing the real cause of his problems, physicians had been prescribing various therapies, but they did not help. His hearing – the most important sense for a musician – was constantly worsening. In 1802 Beethoven wrote his brothers a letter later named after its place of origin, the "Heiligenstadt Testament". Heiligenstadt, now part of Vienna, remains an idyllic place. The despair of Beethoven’s words sharply contrasts with the peace and quiet and the undisturbed atmosphere of the place. He contemplated death, but he chose to live. We can sense this decision from the Symphony No. 2 in D Major. One period music critic descried the symphony’s defiant music as being like "a wounded dragon that refuses to die, but furiously thrashes about with its tail". This was the first symphony to contain a movement labelled as a "scherzo".