Czech Philharmonic • New York
The Czech Philharmonic opens its second evening at New York’s Carnegie Hall with another Dvořák concerto, this time for violin. Joining the orchestra is American violinist Gil Shaham. After the intermission, Chief Conductor Semyon Bychkov leads the Czech Philharmonic in Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, which they recently recorded together to international acclaim.
Programme
Antonín Dvořák
Violin Concerto in A minor, Op. 53
Gustav Mahler
Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor
Performers
Gil Shaham violin
Semyon Bychkov conductor
Czech Philharmonic
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Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor has continued to inspire and thrill since its premiere 120 years ago in Cologne, so it is no surprise that the Prague public gave an exceptionally enthusiastic welcome to Semyon Bychkov’s carefully prepared performances in 2021. As the British music critic Norman Lebrecht said of the orchestra’s recording of the Fifth with its Chief Conductor, “Semyon Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic are setting the pace for Mahler on record in this decade… I can find no flaw in this production. It is as gripping a Mahler Fifth as you will hear anywhere and that burnished Czech sound will linger long in the ear. The orchestra is immeasurably more virtuosic these days than it was in its previous Mahler cycle, nearly half a century ago with Vaclav Neumann, yet its ethos in Mahler remains inimitable.”
The Czech Philharmonic has also recently received acclaim for its performances of Dvořák’s Violin Concerto. Last season, the work was heard with Semyon Bychkov in Prague, Madrid, Vienna, Hamburg, and Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, where the soloist was also Gil Shaham. It is hoped that the enthusiastic ovation received from the attentive Japanese public at the time will mean that the reprise of this collaboration at Carnegie Hall which Dvořák knew so well, will also be as enchanting to the New York public.
Performers
Gil Shaham violin
“I was at school. There was a knock on the door and a message: ‘Gil, can you come down to the principal’s office?’ That can’t be a good thing…am I in trouble? And London Symphony Orchestra representatives are there, looking for a violinist ready with the repertoire to stand in for Itzhak Perlman. I had to choose whether to go back to class or to board the Concorde with them and fly to London immediately. Thousands of metres above the ground, champagne on board, and an unprecedented reception! It took me just a few seconds to decide. They were overjoyed, and we took off,” says the now world-famous violinist Gil Shaham, recalling the watershed moment of his musical career. He was 18 years old, and although he had already achieved many successes by then—he made his debut with the Israel Philharmonic at age ten and a year later won the Claremont Competition in Israel, where he was staying with his parents at the time—he was still a “mere” student at New York’s Juilliard School.
Then the offer to stand in for Itzhak Perlman arrived. Thanks to Shaham’s great success at that concert with the London Symphony Orchestra led by Michael Tilson Thomas, invitations started pouring in for concerts and recordings; suddenly, his name was appearing in all the most important musical media. To this day, he thrills audiences at the world’s most famous concert halls with perfect technique supported by masterful musicianship and very amiable stage presence, as Svatava Barančicová writes for the OperaPlus portal: “His breathtaking virtuosity knows no bounds, yet on stage he makes a most delicate, modest impression. He is always smiling at the public and the orchestra players, and he connects with the musicians, following their playing and enjoying their passages just as he does his own. He does not tower over the orchestra in the pose of a virtuoso; he just puts his fingers on the fingerboard and fully demonstrates his exceptional skills: shocking speed, smooth execution of technically difficult figures that lie awkwardly for the violin, and upward leaps that slash through thickets of notes like the cold, precise flash of a steel blade. His double stops are perfectly in tune at any tempo and in every register. And he smiles disarmingly while doing all of this.”
The review is of a concert at last year’s Dvořák Prague Festival, when Gil Shaham appeared with the Israel Philharmonic. He has been a frequent guest in Prague, however: the Dvořák Prague Festival welcomed him back in 2016 with Antonio Pappano, then three years later he performed brilliantly with the Prague Philharmonia in Dvořák’s Violin Concerto, which he is playing this time in New York with the Czech Philharmonic. “I love Dvořák!” Shaham declares, adding that he listened to the composer’s symphonies already in his youth.
Shaham’s repertoire is large, of course. A few years ago he released a very successful recording of Johann Sebastian Bach’s complete solo sonatas and partitas, and besides traditional works of the classical and romantic eras, he also focuses on playing violin concertos of the 20th century. That is the direction his recording activities have taken in recent years, and one CD from the series “1930s Violin Concertos” was nominated for a Grammy. However, he already has a Grammy to his credit for the album American Scenes, which he recorded at age 27 with André Previn, and he has received many other important musical awards such as the Grand Prix du Disque, the Diapason d’Or, and the designation as Editor’s Choice from the magazine Gramophone.
At the Rudolfinum and around the world, audiences can see Shaham playing his rare “Countess Polignac” Stradivarius. He collaborates regularly with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. However, he enjoys being at home in New York, where he has been living for many years with his wife, the violinist Adele Anthony, and their three children.
Semyon Bychkov conductor
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).
Compositions
Antonín Dvořák
Violin Concerto in A minor, Op. 53
Personal relationships, friendships, and mutual respect among individuals leave a more tangible imprint on history than one might expect. An illustrative chapter of music history involved Fritz Simrock, Antonín Dvořák, Johannes Brahms, Robert and Clara Schumann, and Joseph Joachim.
Among the compositions for solo instrument and orchestra by Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904), three concertos stand out: the Piano Concerto in G minor (Op. 33), the Violin Concerto in A minor (Op. 53), and the Cello Concerto in B minor (Op. 104). The first two date from almost the same period and were both actually published in 1883, but they underwent a different genesis. While Dvořák apparently came up with the idea of composing the early version of the piano concerto in 1876 on his own, perhaps fondly imagining Karel Slavkovský at the piano, the stimulus for writing the Violin Concerto in A minor was external. The publisher Simrock commissioned the increasingly popular Czech composer to write another composition of “Slavonic” character. The Czech Suite, Op. 39, the Slavonic Rhapsodies, Op. 45, the Slavonic Dances, Op. 46, and the String Quartet in E flat major, Op. 51 were all earlier works by Dvořák that were popular items on the sheet music market and were influenced by the melodic and rhythmic patterns of the folk music of the Czechs, Moravians, and other Slavic peoples. The violin virtuoso, conductor, and director of the Hochschule für ausübende Tonkunst Joseph Joachim, whom the composer had met in early April 1879 in Berlin, also supported the idea of a new concerto. The concerto’s dedication to Joachim shows Dvořák’s regard for the chance to collaborate with the legendary violinist and pedagogue.
Dvořák began composing his violin concerto in 1879 while spending the summer in Sychrov. Two years earlier he had left his poorly paid position as the organist at the Church of Saint Adalbert in Prague’s New Town, and now he was devoting himself solely to composing. The repeated awarding of a state stipend in support of artists made it easier for him to take that step, and it also led to his friendship with Johannes Brahms, who in turn facilitated Dvořák’s contract with Simrock, which was of vital importance to him. By the end of the 1870s, Dvořák had established himself at home and abroad. However, the path to the definitive version of the violin concerto was not easy: Dvořák’s consultations with Joachim dragged on (the composer waited more than two between the spring of 1880 and the autumn of 1882 year for Joachim’s reaction), and the publisher also had conditions through his advisor Robert Keller. Paradoxically, as it turned out, Joachim, who was supposed to have been the first interpreter of the work, and who made changes in particular to the form taken by the solo part, probably never played Dvořák’s Violin Concerto in public. František Ondříček gave the premiere in October 1883, and after the successful Prague performance with the orchestra of the National Theatre, he also introduced the composition to the enthusiastic Viennese public that December with the Vienna Philharmonic and with Hans Richter on the conductor’s podium. Ondříček then continued to promote the Violin Concerto in A minor throughout his stellar career.
Dvořák went about integrating the orchestra with the solo part similarly to his great model Brahms, whose Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77, dates from about the same time. Brahms also dedicated his concerto to Joachim, who premiered it in January 1879. In both cases, the strongly contoured orchestral sound is combined with a solo violin part that is technically difficult, but also richly expressive. Dvořák displays mastery of orchestration, warmth of melodic writing, and vigorous rhythm. The first movement (Allegro ma non troppo) is in an ambiguous sonata form without a recapitulation, and it is linked directly to the lyrical slow movement (Adagio ma non troppo); this smooth attacca transition was one of the points under discussion during the revisions. The Adagio is in ternary form with variations, and its mood is highlighted by the “pastoral” key of F major. The energetic third movement (Finale. Allegro giososo, ma non troppo) employs the rhythm of the furiant, a Czech folk dance, with a melancholy dumka providing contrast in the middle section.
Gustav Mahler
Symphony No. 5 in C Sharp Minor
Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) began writing his Fifth Symphony in the summer of 1901, after a close brush with death: in February he had nearly succumbed to a severe haemorrhage and was saved only by a timely surgical intervention. “As I wavered at the boundary between life and death, I was wondering whether it wouldn’t be better to be done with it right away because everyone ends up there eventually”, he wrote later on. By then, Mahler was already well acquainted with death—seven of his twelve younger siblings did not live to the age of two, his brother Ernst died at age 13, and in 1895 Otto committed suicide at the age of 21. Four years later, the composer buried both of his parents and his younger sister Poldi. This may be why Mahler’s works are unusually full of funeral marches, one of which actually begins his Fifth Symphony.
Mahler greeted the dawn of the twentieth century in a sombre mood. Almost simultaneously, he was composing two cycles on poems by Friedrich Rückert (1788–1866): the Rückert-Lieder and Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children), undoubtedly two of the most beautiful song cycles in world literature. (In the Kindertotenlieder, Rückert vented his grief over the loss of both his children, who died of scarlet fever within a mere three weeks at the turn of 1834. Rückert poured out his deep sorrow in a collection of more than 400 poems, only published posthumously, in 1872). At the same time as the songs, Mahler was composing his Symphony No. 5, which opens with unmistakable “fate” fanfares, already anticipated in the first movement of his Fourth Symphony (after which a dance of death is played on the fiddle by the skeleton Freund Hein in the second movement). The first two movements of the new symphony continue in the same vein: “Their content is terribly sad, and I suffered greatly having to write them; I also suffer at the thought that the world shall have to listen to them one day”, he told his friend Natalie Bauer-Lechner (1858–1921). About his symphony, he further noted that it would be “in accordance with all rules, in four movements, each being independent and self-contained, held together only by a similar mood.” It is hard to say how the work might have turned out had Mahler’s life not taken an unexpected turn on 7 November 1901 with the appearance of the young Alma Schindler (1879–1964), who immediately captivated Gustav with her spontaneity. As she later wrote in her diary: “That fellow is made of pure oxygen. Whoever gets close to him will burn up.” They were betrothed in December, Alma became pregnant in January, and the wedding took place on 9 March 1902 at Vienna’s Karlskirche.
The Fifth Symphony is yet another example of Mahler’s innovative approach to form. It consists of five movements grouped into three parts. Part I comprises the opening two movements, which are thematically linked; the first may be understood as an introduction to the symphony as a whole, while the second functions as the first movement proper. The symphony’s central weight is carried by the monumental Scherzo (Part II). The transparently orchestrated Adagietto serves as a kind of intermezzo before the finale, with which it forms Part III of the work. Scored only for strings and harp, the Adagietto has become the most popular movement of the symphony and is often regarded as a declaration of love to Alma. In contrast to the oppressive funerary atmosphere of the opening two movements, it has sometimes been interpreted as a triumph of love over death; however, this view is contradicted by its later use in Luchino Visconti’s film Death in Venice…
The composer conducted the premiere of his Fifth Symphony in Cologne on 18 October 1904. The performance was met with whistles of disapproval, while critics dismissed the work as an “appalling cacophony” marked by “perpetual confusion”. After the premiere, Mahler commented laconically: “No one understood it. I wish I could conduct the premiere 50 years after my death.” Who knows—perhaps Mahler from the perspective of eternity may rejoice in the continuing success of his Fifth Symphony and his other works, still performed on concert stages more than a century after their creation. Yet it is now a mortal conductor who must carry the music forward, along the river of time…