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 2024, the Year of Czech Music culminated 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).

With a bit of hyperbole, Franz Joseph Haydn is sometimes called the father of the classical symphony and of the string quartet. In fact, he significantly advanced the musical development of both genres in terms of both the quantity of works he composed in them and, above all, his constant searching for new creative paths. In the course of his long lifetime, he came in personal contact with three stylistic epochs, the Baroque, which reached its pinnacle around the middle of the 18th century in the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, Classicism, which Haydn himself was directly shaping, and Romanticism, of which he became a forerunner. Haydn’s Symphony No. 44 in E minor (Hob I:44) dates from the years when he was employed in the music-loving, cultivated environment of the court of Prince Esterházy. The work was finished in 1772, around the same time as his Symphony No. 43 (“Merkur”) and the famous “Farewell Symphony” (Abschiedsymphonie, Symphony No. 45), in which the Kapellmeister Haydn humorously yet firmly reminded his employer that musicians also need a holiday.

The title “Trauer-Symphonie” (“Mouning Symphony”), which is sometimes used for the Symphony No. 44, supposedly comes from Haydn himself: he is said to have wanted its slow movement played at his funeral. Whether or not this is just a legend, the work in any case belongs to the series of Haydn’s symphonies from the 1770s that reflect the emotionally tense atmosphere of the period, influenced by the German literary movement called Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress). The pre-Romantic emphasis on emotionality as opposed to the rationality of the Enlightenment manifested itself in music in particular by a preference for minor keys, rhythmic urgency, greater dynamic extremes, and the use of dissonances. As in his other symphonic works, in the Symphony No. 44 Haydn took pains to create internal links between all four movements, unusually placing the menuet in the position of the second movement (Menuetto e Trio. Allegretto) and giving it the form of a canon “in diapason”, i.e. a canon at the octave, with the lower-pitched instruments playing the same theme as the violins, but an octave lower and three beats later. This gives the menuet a more serious, ceremonial character. In the third movement (Adagio), the strings and the small wind section of oboes and French horns play a lyrical cantilena that flows along calmly in E major, the parallel key to the symphony’s overall tonality. The first movement (Allegro con brio) and the finale (Presto) form a contrasting framework for the inner movements.

The Russian and Soviet 20th-century composer Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich did not write many compositions for cello and orchestra, and they appeared late in his extensive oeuvre, but today his two cello concertos are cornerstones of the genre. The Cello Concerto No. 1 in E flat major, Op. 107, dates from 1959. Besides the Symphony-Concerto for cello and orchestra (1950–1952) by Sergei Prokofiev, Shostakovich’s inspiration was the performing artistry of the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich (1927–2007), who had studied composition under Shostakovich at the Moscow Conservatoire at the end of the 1940s, and who became famous as an extraordinary talented performer at home and abroad during the decade that followed. The fates of Shostakovich and Rostropovich also became intertwined because of the accusations of formalism levelled against the composer during the 1950s, when Rostropovich rose to Shostakovich’s defence. One can scarcely imagine the extent to which artistic activities in those days were under the thumb of the Soviet bureaucracy or the demands of the Communist Party, or the degree to which music was hindered by the distorted ideals of “political engagement” and composing “for the masses”. For many years, Shostakovich lived with the tension of guarding his artistic freedom against pressure from the regime.

Shostakovich wrote his First Cello Concerto at a time when the cultural restrictions imposed by the notorious Zhdanov Doctrine were finally easing, making it easier for artists to breathe. The concerto is virtuosic, mellow, and humorous, “made to order” for Mstislav Rostropovich, who is said to have memorised it in just four days. He gave the public premiere in Leningrad on 4 October 1959 with the Leningrad Philharmonic under the baton of Yevgeny Mravinsky. Whilst still composing the concerto, Shostakovich characterised the first movement as a “comical march”, but it sounds more like sharply rhythmic, nervous whirling that surrounds the melodically striking main theme, which permeates the movement with fierce insistence. The French horn (the only brass instrument in the score) holds a place of special importance throughout the concerto, constantly reminding us of the most important melodic material. The ternary second movement (Moderato) is connected to the third (Cadenza) and fourth (Allegro con molto) movements into a single whole, and the linking cadenza lasts 148 bars (!), with the solo part elaborating on themes from the two previous movements, after which the music flows naturally into the finale. The cadenza thus serves as a bridge between the lyrical slow movement (with the ethereal sound of the celesta joining in briefly) and the concerto’s exciting conclusion with dance-like, fierce, and grotesque elements.

The Czech premiere of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 took place at the Prague Spring International Music Festival in 1960 with the Czech Philharmonic, Mstislav Rostropovich, and the conductor Kirill Kondrashin. The soloist unleashed a “volcano of energy, tempestuous expression in the outer movements, and ardent, extraordinarily tender feeling in the lyrical movement”, and his performance was regarded as one of the highlights of the whole festival.

A review of a performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 36, which appeared in the Viennese journal Zeitung für die elegante Welt, called the work “a hideous monster, a wounded dragon that stubbornly fights on and refuses to die and, despite losing blood, keeps furiously thrashing about in vain with its tail.” Clearly, in the early 19th century, Beethoven’s new symphony could have struck many listeners as being too wild, overly dramatic, extravagant for its contrasts and sudden changes, and excessive in its generous formal outlines, dynamics, and orchestration. Today, when we can judge this composition well after the fact and with knowledge of Beethoven’s whole oeuvre, this oft-quoted characterisation seems rather myopic.

Beethoven began working on his Second Symphony in ca. 1800, and he continued sketching it in 1801–1802. It is dedicated to Prince Karl Lichnowsky, who was one of Beethoven’s (and Mozart’s) most generous patrons. The period around the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries was not easy for Beethoven: the gradual worsening of his hearing was accompanied by physical and mental difficulties, increasing his isolation from society. At the same time, however, he became increasingly artistic ambitious as a way of coping with his misfortunes. Besides writing chamber music (piano sonatas, the important cycle of Six String Quartets, Op. 18, violin sonatas etc.), he was also writing such works at the time as the Symphony No. 1 in C major, the First Piano Concerto, and the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives. In a document known as the Heiligenstadt Testament (1802), intended for the composer’s brothers Carl and Johann, Beethoven wrote an intimate confession of his condition, declaring his decision to fulfil his destiny as an extraordinarily gifted artist.

Beethoven’s Second Symphony is an outgrowth of his personal circumstances. The first movement opens with a slow introduction (Adagio molto) followed by a contrasting fast section (Allegro con brio). The sonata-form second movement (Larghetto), “so lovely, so pure, and happily conceived, with such natural voice leading” (Ferdinand Ries), is one of Beethoven’s most beautiful lyrical creations. Then for the third movement, the composer replaced the usual menuet with something entirely new: a Scherzo. The concluding fourth movement (Allegro molto) brings the symphony to its energetic climax with a surge of heightened sonic contrasts. The work received its public premiere in April 1803 at the Theater an der Wien as part of an opulent concert programme consisting solely of Beethoven’s compositions.