Czech Philharmonic • New York

Grammy Award-winning pianist Daniil Trifonov is a solo artist, champion of the concerto repertoire, chamber and vocal collaborator, and composer. Combining consummate technique with rare sensitivity and depth, his performances are a perpetual source of wonder to audiences and critics alike. He won the Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Solo Album of 2018 with Transcendental, the Liszt collection that marked his third title as an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist.

In 2024/2025, Trifonov undertakes season-long artistic residencies with both the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Czech Philharmonic. A highlight of his Chicago residency is Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto with incoming music director Klaus Mäkelä, and his Czech tenure features Dvořák’s Concerto with Semyon Bychkov at season-opening concerts in Prague, Toronto, and at New York’s Carnegie Hall. Trifonov also opens the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra’s season with Mozart’s 25th Piano Concerto under Andris Nelsons; performs Prokofiev’s Second with the San Francisco Symphony and Esa-Pekka Salonen; reprises Dvořák’s concerto for a European tour with Jakub Hrůša and the Bamberg Symphony; plays Ravel’s G-major Concerto with Hamburg’s NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra and Alan Gilbert; and joins Rafael Payare and the Montreal Symphony for concertos by Schumann and Beethoven on a major eight-city European tour. In recital, Trifonov appears twice more at Carnegie Hall as part of two U.S. tours, with a solo program and with violinist Leonidas Kavakos. Due for release in fall 2024, My American Story, the pianist’s new Deutsche Grammophon double album, pairs solo pieces with concertos by Gershwin and Mason Bates.

Trifonov’s existing Deutsche Grammophon discography includes the Grammy-nominated live recording of his Carnegie recital debut; Chopin Evocations; Silver Age, for which he received Opus Klassik’s Instrumentalist of the Year/Piano award; the best-selling, Grammy-nominated double album Bach: The Art of Life; and three volumes of Rachmaninov works with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, of which two received Grammy nominations and the third won BBC Music’s 2019 Concerto Recording of the Year. Named Gramophone’s 2016 Artist of the Year and Musical America’s 2019 Artist of the Year, Trifonov was made a “Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres” by the French government in 2021.

During the 2010/2011 season, Trifonov won medals at three of the music world’s most prestigious competitions: Third Prize in Warsaw’s Chopin Competition, First Prize in Tel Aviv’s Rubinstein Competition, and both First Prize and Grand Prix in Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Competition. He studied with Sergei Babayan at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Soprano Kateřina Kněžíková is one of today’s most promising singers. Besides performing opera, she is increasingly devoting herself to the concert repertoire, collaborating with such ensembles as the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Bamberg Symphony, the Camerata Salzburg, or the Orchestra dellʼAccademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. Her core repertoire consists of works by Dvořák, Martinů, and Janáček and the song repertoire. She is a laureate of several vocal competitions and was honoured at the 2018 Classic Prague Awards for the best chamber music performance. She earned a Thalia Award for her outstanding performance in Julietta (Martinů) on the stage of the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre.

In 2006 she became a full-time opera ensemble member at the National Theatre, where she is now appearing in many productions including Rusalka, Così fan tutte, Carmen, The Magic Flute, The Bartered Bride, and The Jacobin. Nonetheless, she sees one of her greatest successes as having been the title role in Káťa Kabanová at the Glyndebourne Opera Festival in 2021. 

The Czech mezzo-soprano Lucie Hilscherová makes guest appearances at the National Theatre in Prague, the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre in Ostrava, the J. K. Tyl Theatre in Pilsen, the Silesian Theatre in Opava, the State Theatre in Košice, and the Mannheim National Theatre. She has also appeared as Háta in The Bartered Bride in Tokyo (2010, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Suntory Hall, conductor Leoš Svárovský) and London (2011, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Barbican Hall, conductor Jiří Bělohlávek).

She is in demand for concert performances of the lieder and oratorio repertoire, and she also enjoys interpreting the works of contemporary composers. She has collaborated with important orchestras and conductors, appearing at such festivals as Musikfest Stuttgart, Beethovenfest Bonn, Grafenegg Musik-Sommer, Prague Spring, the Easter Festival of Sacred Music in Brno, Smetana’s Litomyšl, the St. Wenceslas Music Festival, and the Peter Dvorský International Music Festival in Jaroměřice.

Aleš Briscein studied clarinet, saxophone and opera singing at the Prague Conservatory. He has participated in prestigious festivals (Edinburgh International Festival or Prague Spring) and collaborated with outstanding orchestras and conductors, including Christoph von Dohnányi, Valery Gergiev, Sir John Eliot Gardiner or Tomáš Netopil.

Recent highlights include Der fliegende Holländer in Prague, War and Peace in Geneva, Makropulos Affair at Salzburg Festival, Dalibor and Die Königskinder in Frankfurt, Die tote Stadt in Berlin and Dresden, From the House of the Dead in Munich, Wozzeck in Vienna, Jenůfa in Bologna, Così fan tutte and Mazeppa in Berlin, Lohengrin in Erl and Two Widows in Angers and Nantes. His concert repertoire includes, among others, Mahler’s 8th symphony, Beethoven's 9th symphony and Missa solemnis, Dvořák’s Stabat mater, as well as Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass, or Stravinsky’s Les Noces.

For the American bass David Leigh, today’s encounter with the Czech Philharmonic is not a debut either. He and the orchestra already collaborated in the 2023/24 season for a performance of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony on tour in Hamburg. However, the young singer’s chief domain is opera, to which he devotes himself at a world-class level despite his young age. As a member of the prestigious Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, he has appeared on stage regularly at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, and since then he has sung such important roles as Hagen (Der Ring des Nibelungen) in a production at the Zurich Opera House, King Mark (Tristan und Isolde) with the Santa Fe Opera, and Filippo (Don Carlos) with the Dallas Opera.

He benefitted from ideal conditions for musical development. He was born to an artistic family—his father is a respected composer, his mother is an acclaimed painter, and his sister is a noted playwright. Leigh studied composition at Yale University, then voice and opera at the Mannes College and the Yale School of Music, where he also earned the Harriet Gibbs Fox Memorial Prize for the best grades. He has also been awarded prizes by the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, the McCammon Competition held by the Fort Worth Opera, and the Wagner Society of New York.

A graduate of Prague’s Academy of Performing Arts and of a year-long study visit at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg, since 2006 Daniela Valtová Kosinová has been the solo organist and principal keyboard player of the Prague Symphony Orchestra. As a soloist, she collaborates with other Czech and foreign orchestras and appears regularly with the Czech Philharmonic, with which she has twice toured the USA. Her first performance with this orchestra of the Glagolitic Mass, to which she “found a path of her own”, took place at Vienna’s Musikverein under the baton of Jiří Bělohlávek, followed by several more performances including one on a floating stage on the Vltava and others on a tour of Europe in 2022. 

A winner of third prize and the title of laureate at the Brno International Organ Competition in 2002, she is often invited to such leading music festivals as Beethovenfest Bonn, Prague Spring, Smetana’s Litomyšl, and Janáček May. She is a cofounder of the concert programme Music Between the Words, and she also devotes herself to composing. In 2010 she released a jazz album of her own music titled Meeting Point, and she has appeared at numerous jazz festivals.

The Prague Philharmonic Choir (PPC), founded in 1935 by the choirmaster Jan Kühn, is the oldest professional mixed choir in the Czech Republic. Their current choirmaster and artistic director is Lukáš Vasilek, and the second choirmaster is Lukáš Kozubík.

The choir has earned the highest acclaim in the oratorio and cantata repertoire, performing with the world’s most famous orchestras. In this country, they collaborate regularly with the Czech Philharmonic and the Prague Philharmonia. They also perform opera as the choir-in-residence of the opera festival in Bregenz, Austria.

This season, they will appear at four choral concerts of their own, with programmes focusing mainly on difficult, lesser-known works of the choral repertoire. Again this year they will be devoting themselves to educational projects: for voice students, they are organising the Academy of Choral Singing, and for young children there is a cycle of educational concerts.

The choir has been honoured with the 2018 Classic Prague Award and the 2022 Antonín Dvořák Prize.

Lukáš Vasilek studied conducting and musicology. Since 2007, he has been the chief choirmaster of the Prague Philharmonic Choir (PPC). Most of his artistic work with the choir consists of rehearsing and performing the a cappella repertoire and preparing the choir to perform in large-scale cantatas, oratorios, and operatic projects, during which he collaborates with world-famous conductors and orchestras (such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Czech Philharmonic, the Israel Philharmonic, and the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic).

Besides leading the PPC, he also engages in other artistic activities, especially in collaboration with the vocal ensemble Martinů Voices, which he founded in 2010. As a conductor or choirmaster, his name appears on a large number of recordings that the PPC have made for important international labels (Decca Classics, Supraphon); in recent years, he has been devoting himself systematically to the recording of Bohuslav Martinů’s choral music. His recordings have received extraordinary acclaim abroad and have earned honours including awards from the prestigious journals Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine, and Diapason.

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).

Dvořák was already a composer of genius by 1876, when he wrote his Piano Concerto in G minor, Op. 33, but he was basically known only to the Prague public. At the time, he had to earn a very modest living as an organist and by giving piano lessons privately. In those days, the pianist Karel Slavkovský was devoting considerable attention to music by Czech composers. On 24 March 1878, it was he who played was the first to play the solo part of Dvořák’s new work in the hall at Prague’s Žofín Palace. A second performance, again in Prague and with the same pianists, took place two years later. At that time, shortly after the extraordinary success of Dvořák’s Moravian Duets and of the Slavonic Dances in Germany, he was receiving offers from important publishers. One of them, Julius Hainauer from Breslau, published the concerto in 1883. Before publication, Dvořák made major revisions to the score, giving the work its ideally polished sound. His concerto was ahead of its time in many ways, and that had negative consequences. Some music critics (although a small minority) saw the work’s departures from the usual as weaknesses, while others were blinded by their aversion to Czech patriotism, an entirely irrelevant objection in the case of Dvořák. Despite such voices, the composer maintained a very detached perspective. After an otherwise successful concert in Berlin in 1884, Dvořák wrote to the piano virtuoso Anna Grosser: “All this criticism overflowing with ridicule, hatred, and bile (more like an execution) provides me with plenty of amusement and entertainment. Things keep getting crazier, but those gentlemen in Berlin still will not stop me from taking flight!” 

The critics did not keep the composer from taking flight, but his Piano Concerto remained grounded to some extent. The concerto continued to be played over the following years, but notably less often than other great works by Dvořák. An important chapter in the performance history of the concerto in the 20th century belongs to an arrangement of the solo part made by the Prague piano virtuoso and teacher Vilém Kurz 15 years after Dvořák’s death. Several of his pupils and other pianists played the concerto in that form even long after such arrangements had ceased to be fashionable, when, to the contrary, there were increasing efforts towards the most faithful possible interpretations of composers’ intentions. The soloist for today’s concert, András Schiff, has clear reasons for playing Dvořák’s own version. More and more pianists have begun doing so in recent decades, but the work is still performed less often overall than other concertos. The key to an explanation may be the words of the phenomenal pianist Sviatoslav Richter, who only played Dvořák’s own version. Richter certainly did not suffer from technical limitations, but he always “merely” had to get to the heart of a work and understand it. In November 1977, he wrote in his diary: “I recall how long it took me to learn this [Dvořák’s] concerto (nearly three years), while I learned Bartók’s Second Piano Concerto in just two months without having any special difficulties.” This may be another reason why it is hard to find another work like Dvořák’s Piano Concerto: brilliant yet seldom heard.

Among great creative figures, Leoš Janáček is remarkable in that the older he got, the more “youthful”, original, and modern the music that he wrote became. This was perhaps because he had lost everything. Released by the cruelty of fate from his ties and concerns for his parents and his children, he was truly able to find himself. He cast aside conventions and tried to get to the heart of things.

Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass is one of the most powerful sacred compositions in music history. The 72-year-old composer wrote the music to the text in Old Church Slavonic in 1926 at his favourite spa, Luhačovice. “The rain in Luhačovice is pouring, just pouring. I look out of the window at the gloomy mountain Komoň. The clouds come rolling in, and the wind tears and scatters them. […] The darkness becomes denser and denser. Now I look out into the black of night; lightning slashes into the darkness.” That is how Janáček described the atmosphere that August, when he began writing his Glagolitic Mass. The decision was made quickly. Although he had taken an interest in the Old Church Slavonic text of the Mass a few years beforehand and had made a few sketches, the music that he ultimately began writing in Luhačovice had nothing in common with those sketches. For Janáček, starting the new work was quite emotional. His ideas had to mature, but once creative fervour had taken hold, he composed quickly. He sketched out the entire Mass in just three weeks! By October 1926, he had finished it. He made more quite substantial changes after the premiere, which took place on 5 December 1927 in Brno. Janáček was able to make cuts. He is never verbose; he is precise.

For example, in the movement “Věruju” (Credo) he shortened the orchestral interlude that contained a very powerful passage inducing the atmosphere before the choir begins singing about Christ’s crucifixion. Janáček originally scored this harsh passage for three (!) sets of tympani, and he combined them with expressive music for brass and organ. In a letter to Kamila Stösslová he wrote: “…so I’m doing a bit of a depiction of the legend that when Christ was stretched out on the cross, the heavens were torn. So I wrote rumbling and lightning…” His wife Zdena supposedly told him: “Leoš, that’s impossible; you’re cursing at the Lord God there.” And a while later Janáček said: “So I’ve gotten rid of the tympani there…”

Although the Glagolitic Mass is a musical setting of a liturgical text, the work is not confessional in character. To Ludvík Kundera’s review, in which he called the composer an “old man” and a “firm believer”, Janáček’s reply was “No old man, no believer, you youngster”. This is often quoted, but we must take it with a grain of salt. Janáček was unquestionably a spiritual person. He was raised in the environment of the church at the Benedictine Monastery in Old Brno. However, he was not a practicing Catholic. We know only that he brought his children up in faith and prayer. He apparently felt distanced from the Catholic Church, so he was attracted to the idea of writing a Mass, but to the Old Church Slavonic text.