BIOGRAPHY

Born in Leningrad (now St Petersburg), Semyon Bychkov was 22 when he left Russia to make a new start in the USA. With extensive experience in Europe and throughout the world, he has been a truly international artist for more than a quarter of a century, yet he firmly believes his Russian upbringing is of crucial importance to the man and artist he has become.

‘Those years were vital,’ he says. ‘They were what allowed me, later on, to be enriched by other cultures. I believe that everything we live through can be, and should be, considered beneficial. Whether it is joyful or painful is beside the point.

Even the negative aspects of my time in the Soviet Union were of value. They taught me to distinguish between what is positive and what is negative. And the negatives make you stronger, because if you have the willpower to resist them you are going to be OK.

‘This, I guess, is what people call ‘roots’. I think the deeper the roots and the wider they spread the better. And, of course, you do not grow up alone. I had the extraordinary privilege to encounter people who played an enormous role in my upbringing, musical and personal.’

One of the most significant of these people was the legendary conducting teacher Ilya Musin, who taught in Leningrad/St Petersburg for 65 years. ‘Musin was everything,’ says Bychkov. ‘At 95 years of age he still had something to learn, progress to make.

“He was able to develop a philosophy of conducting that combined the three fundamental questions that exist in everything one tries to do. The first is ‘what?’, the second is ‘why?’, the third is ‘how?’.

Conducting is the youngest musical profession anyway and still not really understood. But a great part of Musin’s genius was that once he had figured out the answers to those three questions for himself, he still took into account that every person has their own physique and personality. One person will be tall with short arms; another will be short with long arms; some people are immediately able to ape someone else’s movements, others are so inhibited that they can never do it. He was able to appreciate the capabilities and the mental constitution of a very individual student. And then he would help this person to achieve what he or she wanted, as opposed to producing another model from the assembly line.

Musin was a very kind man, full of very quiet humour. But occasionally he would get so hot, so mad – and it would last exactly five seconds. He would calm down just as quickly.’

Semyon Bychkov’s studies with Ilya Musin enhanced his own innate musicality, leading to his winning the 1973 Rachmaninov Conducting Competition. However, two years later he emigrated to the USA.

‘I had to be free,’ he says as a statement of fact. ‘It’s as simple as that. It sounds like a slogan, but it happens to be the truth. I wanted to be free to make my choices, to make my decisions, to take my responsibilities. And I wanted to be free not to lie. One of the realities of the Soviet Union – not the only one, but definitely one – was the existence of the ‘party line’. I was a ‘Rabinovich’ type,’ he says, referring to the hero of many Russian Jewish jokes, a character too clever for his own good but refreshingly resilient.

‘Here’s a lovely story. It happens at a Party meeting in Moscow. In comes the Party boss and tells everybody what the party line is. Then he says, ‘You, Ivanov, what do you think about this?’ Ivanov jumps up, he says, ‘Comrade, I completely agree with the party line.’ ‘Very good. And you, Petrov, what do you think about it?’ Petrov, who is not quite as bright, thinks, and then he says, ‘Comrade, I completely agree with Comrade Ivanov.’ ‘OK. And you, Rabinovich, you’re sitting there saying nothing – don’t you have a point of view?’ Rabinovich says, ‘Comrade Commissar, I have a very definite point of view, but I completely disagree with myself.’ In the Soviet Union, I was often disagreeing with myself!’

Bychkov refutes any suggestion that his view of Western freedom was idealistic. ‘If you say, how could you imagine America? Democracy, all these kinds of concepts – well, why not? I have a healthy imagination. When I look at the music of Beethoven I have to imagine how it should sound, otherwise how could I play it? So do you think I could not imagine what it would be like for people to be free to vote? Or not to vote? For people to be free to say what they thought? Or to choose not to say what they thought?

There is one mistake that I did not make. I did not imagine that life in the West would be complete paradise for everybody, 24 hours a day with no days off! Even though I had not experienced democracy, I did not imagine there could be such a thing as an ideal society. Human nature being what it is, life is going to be complex everywhere. And I was never disappointed.’

Semyon Bychkov’s first European engagements pre-date his directorship of the Orchestre de Paris by several years (1989-1998). By the mid-Eighties he had already established relationships with many European orchestras and opera houses, and made his first recording for Philips with the Berlin Philharmoniker.

‘It was essential for me to make music in Europe,’ he says. ‘What a musician tries to do is to penetrate the spirit of the work of music. That spirit is born in particular circumstances, in a particular place, at a particular time, from a particular person. You have to be physically present, and somehow breathe the air in which that music was born.

When I arrived at the Orchestre de Paris, I had never felt any special connection to French music. But the artistic encounter coincided with changes in my private life, meeting [the pianist] Marielle Labèque, who became my wife, and becoming part of a French family, so this brought another opportunity to get to know ‘the French streets’.’

Nearly ten years later, in 1997, Semyon Bychkov became chief conductor of WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln. ‘Cologne was one of the most gratifying creative experiences for me, in practically every way I can think of. In Cologne there was always a very strong tradition for contemporary music, yet when I arrived they only knew the classical/romantic repertoire in what I laughingly call ‘a molto espressivo way’, as a traditional German orchestra would. Since then, there has been a change of generation and an assimilation of aesthetics, which we have come to expect of a symphony orchestra today when interpreting early and classical repertoire.

The other part of the process was our operatic projects, and subsequent recordings of Daphne, Elektra, and Lohengrin. This brought the orchestra a flexibility that would simply not exist but for contact with the operatic tradition. I think every symphony orchestra should perform opera, just as every opera orchestra needs to play symphonic music.’

At almost the same time that Semyon Bychkov became chief conductor in Cologne, he was appointed chief conductor of the Dresden Semperoper. ‘It was frequently pointed out that one was ultra-traditional, the other ultra-modern. I always said that was fantastic for me – it was as if I was able to live in the 19th century and the end of the 20th century. Well, the ones from the 20th century – Cologne – didn’t mind me saying that, but the ones I was referring to as ‘from the 19th century’ felt really uneasy about it. I never meant it to sound as if in Dresden they were dinosaurs!

Of course, the Semperoper is the house of Wagner and Strauss. It gives a certain frisson to be reminded that Wagner was your predecessor, however removed. It was incredibly touching to conduct Strauss in the very house where the majority of his operas were premiered. We played a new production of Der Rosenkavalier from the original parts but without the cuts bitterly objected to by Strauss.’

Bychkov acknowledges that the weight of tradition in such an environment can be restrictive. ‘Everybody agrees that tradition should not be a mindless repetition of bad habits accumulated over generations. But the difference between talking about it and living it can be enormous.’

Founded post-war as a radio orchestra, the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln is the essence of a forward-looking institution. ‘The conditions in which we worked were quite extraordinary. We always had microphones, and most of the time when I conducted we had cameras. The greatest teacher you can ever have is the microphone. If you don’t like what you hear, you can’t blame somebody else. And what you hear in playback is quite different from what you hear while performing.’

Semyon Bychkov enjoys long-term relationships with the world’s most renowned opera houses, including the Royal Opera House, London, the Metropolitan Opera, New York, La Scala, Milan, Teatro Real, Madrid and the opera houses of Vienna, Dresden and Paris.

One of the longest of these associations is with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. ‘The very first time I came there was for a new production of Elektra. While I was waiting at the security desk to be shown to my dressing room, they asked me if I wanted a cup of coffee.

When the porter is nice, somehow you have a feeling it will be the same throughout the house. And that has proved exactly the case at Covent Garden. They are magnificent people to work with, making clear their expectation of quality in a very quiet way, with no speech-making. For those of us who are not British it is actually very endearing.’

Elektra was followed by Boris Godunov, Queen of Spades, Lohengrin, Don Carlo, Tannhäuser,La bohème, Die Frau ohne Schatten, Eugene Onegin, Così fan tutte and Rusalka. Boris Godunov was also a success for Bychkov at the Met, where he subsequently returned twice for Otello. Another house that extended the hand of friendship is Paris. ‘The day I finished the run of Un Ballo in Maschera, the orchestra asked me to send them a dedicated photo to put on their wall. This is a very rare honour! Bychkov returned to conduct Tristan und Isolde in Paris, and on tour in Japan and Russia, as well as Elektra in Paris.

Bychkov has also had conspicuous success with another of the world’s most demanding opera audiences: the Wiener Staatsoper. ‘This was one of the most thrilling chapters in my life. After Elektra and Tristan there, I conducted a new production of Daphne, which was a discovery for everybody, because it hadn’t been performed there since Böhm conducted a few performances 30 years before.

I kept being asked ‘What’s so interesting about Daphne?’ The questions and scepticism stopped the moment they heard the music. The atmosphere in that house is so electric that you need the fire brigade standing by because you never know when the flames will appear. It’s a hot public. It’s a hot acoustic, which helps of course. People really want to be there.’ After the revelation of virtually unknown Daphne came new productions of Lohengrin, Khovanschina, a revival of Elektra and a new production of Parsifal, an opera which he conducted twice in Vienna, and twice in Bayreuth, as well as at the Teatro Real in Madrid.

In both operatic and orchestral repertoire, Semyon Bychkov has worked extensively in Italy. He conducted both Tosca and Elektra at La Scala and also appears in the orchestral series.

‘My relationship with Italy started in Florence. I was invited to conduct the Maggio Musicale orchestra, and it was such a warm first contact that they asked me to become their Principal Guest Conductor, a position I held for 6 years from 1992.

This was another opportunity to get under the skin of a particular style of music, to know the repertoire as a resident rather than a tourist. I was even bold enough to conduct La bohème in my second season in Florence, being too naive to realise the risk I was taking. Only after the successful first night was I told I’d been lucky to come out of it alive!

Italians identify with the melody and text, the basis of opera, but an interesting phenomenon has been happening in the last 15 years: young Italian musicians are studying abroad. They are very aware of the variety of musical expression dictated by the music itself and they understand instinctively that they can’t play Brahms the way they would Puccini.

If I am to learn a foreign language, my aim is to try and speak it as much as possible with the inflection of the natives. When you make music, you try to do the same. Inevitably there will be a slight accent – I can always tell if it is a Russian orchestra playing, or German, or French, or Italian. That’s part of the charm, and I absolutely treasure it. No matter how much you try to unify Europe, however much smaller the world is becoming because of improved communications and shared cultures, in the final analysis no one can change national character. That is something you inherit when you are born: It comes with your mother’s milk.’