Music Matters

Tom Service talks at length to one of the 21st-century's leading conductors, Semyon Bychkov. Celebrating his 70th birthday last year, Semyon prizes servitude to music’s spirit and using one’s talent to find how best to let it unfold. Tom meets him at his home in London, the morning after conducting Bruckner’s epic 8th Symphony during this summer’s Proms, where he reflects on the degree to which a music can invade one’s existence and the struggle to escape its orbit, following a compelling performance, lest it leads to sleepless nights. Tom hears how Bychkov fled the Soviet Union in the 1970s, about his forays into the musical world of Vienna where he arrived with the just the currency in his pockets, and how his subsequent experiences seem, in hindsight, like destiny. He talks about the mobilisation of Russian culture, how music is utilised by the political establishment, the illusion of power, and why for a while he excised the music of Shostakovich from his life so evocative was its strength during his early days of self-imposed exile. He tells Tom, nevertheless, about the attitude, aspiration and judgment he learned from his early teachers – sustenance to which he returns – and how they nurture his musical evolution still. He explains, too, the continuing musical challenges behind the monumental cycle of Mahler’s symphonies that he embarked upon when appointed the chief conductor of the Czech Philharmonic.