Interview: Semyon Bychkov: his own man

Semyon Bychkov has rather unspectacularly become one of the world’s most sought after conductors, and at present he is in London to conduct a series of performances of Wagner’s now least often staged canonical opera, Tannhäuser, at the Royal Opera House.

Semyon Bychkov has rather unspectacularly become one of the world’s most sought after conductors, and at present he is in London to conduct a series of performances of Wagner’s now least often staged canonical opera, Tannhäuser, at the Royal Opera House.

He was trained in St Petersburg, at that time Leningrad, by the apparently legendary Ilya Musin; but at least as important was the long-time chief conductor of the Leningrad Philharmonic, Yevgeny Mravinsky, an old-style orchestral tyrant, the sensational results of whose leadership can still be heard in many recordings. Bychkov felt constrained, oppressed in the Soviet Union, and was allowed to leave in 1975, going to the United States via Vienna and Rome.