Please press the play button above to hear the recorded interview, which was recently broadcast on KMFA 89.5.  

Maestro Semyon Bychkov is a Soviet-born conductor who has lead performances and recordings with many of the world’s great orchestras since he immigrated to the United States in 1975. Although Bychkov both studied in the United States and started his career here, it’s the great orchestras of Europe that he’s focused his attention on in the past twenty years. A former director of the Paris Orchestra, Bychkov has also been Chief Conductor of Dresden’s Semperoper and of the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra. 

Currently, Bychkov is the Otto Klemperer Chair of Conducting at the Royal Academy of Music in London and is also the Gunter Wand Conducting Chair with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. A prolific recording artist, he worked primarily with Philips in the late 80s and early 90s and has just launched an ongoing project devoted to the orchestral music of Tchaikovsky with the Czech Philharmonic and Decca.

The first album of The Tchaikovsky Project features the Rome and Juliet Fantasy Overture and the Pathetique Symphony. Bychkov sat down for a conversation with Chris Johnson about the composer, his music, and one of the Maestro’s earliest conducting memories.