Martin Kettle gives Semyon Bychkov four stars in The Guardian for his Remembrance Day Sunday performance of Britten’s War Requiem with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at London’s Royal Albert Hall.
Kettle writes, “Bychkov’s conducting has a wonderful sense of line and structure. You know where you are going from the moment he gives his first cue. His reading was clearly thought out and sustained – the best in my experience. It unfolded inexorably from the rising dark strings of the opening bars all the way to the existential heart of the work in the Libera Me, nearly 80 minutes later, with its anguished calls for the vanquishing of death and the Albert Hall organ powering a chilling climax. But this reading dug deep, too, especially in the fragile final pages, and Bychkov brought out a sinister Weill-like jauntiness in parts of the score that managed to add to the haunting seriousness of the whole…Bychkov’s masterly realisation dug to the heart of Britten’s score and brought out the haunting seriousness of the whole.”