Czech Philharmonic • Yokohama
After a four–year absence, the Czech Philharmonic is also playing in Yokohama, and with this concert it ends its autumn tour of Asia. The final concert is on a grand scale with Antonín Dvořák’s last two symphonies, the Eighth (“English”) and Ninth (“From the New World”) under the baton of the orchestra’s chief conductor Semyon Bychkov.
Programme
Antonín Dvořák
Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88
Antonín Dvořák
Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95 “From the New World”
Performers
Semyon Bychkov conductor
Czech Philharmonic
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Performers
Semyon Bychkov Chief Conductor and Music Director
In 2018 Bychkovʼs tenure as Chief Conductor and Music Director of the Czech Philharmonic was initiated with concerts in Prague, London, New York, and Washington celebrating the 100th anniversary of Czechoslovak independence. 2019 marked the culmination of The Tchaikovsky Project: concerts, residencies and recordings of Tchaikovskyʼs symphonies. For 2024ʼs Year of Czech Music, in addition to recordings of Smetanaʼs Má vlast – voted by BBC Music Magazine as Orchestral Recording of the Year 2025 – and Dvořákʼs Symphonies 7, 8 and 9, Czech music was at the centre of extensive European tours as well as concerts in the US, including three concerts at Carnegie Hall. Earlier this season, Bychkov toured with the Orchestra to Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Austria, Italy, Germany and Luxembourg. In April 2026, PENTATONE released the box set of Mahler symphonies recorded with the Orchestra since 2018.
In the 2026/2027 season, Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic return to repertoire that has accompanied him since the beginning of his career. Alongside Czech music, he will focus above all on the works of Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Rachmaninoff and Modest Mussorgsky. The programmes of the 131st season thus connect the music of his native country with the Czech tradition at the centre of his work in Prague.
He is a frequent guest with the leading international orchestras and opera companies and has recorded extensively including with the Berlin Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio, Concertgebouworkest, Philharmonia Orchestra, London Philharmonic and Orchestre de Paris. Benchmark recordings with WDR Cologne include the four Brahms Symphonies, in addition to works by Strauss, Mahler, Shostakovich, Rachmaninoff, Verdi, Glanert and Höller. His 1992 recording of Tchaikovskyʼs Eugene Onegin was the recommended recording for BBC Radio 3ʼs Building a Library (2020); Wagnerʼs Lohengrin was BBC Music Magazineʼs Record of the Year (2010); and Schmidtʼs Symphony No. 2 with the Vienna Philharmonic was BBC Music Magazineʼs Record of the Month (2018).
In common with the Czech Philharmonic, Bychkov has one foot firmly in the culture of the East and the other in the West. Born in St Petersburg in 1952, he emigrated to the United States in 1975 and is now based in Europe. In 1989 Bychkov returned to the former Soviet Union as Principal Guest Conductor of the St Petersburg Philharmonic and, the same year, was named Music Director of the Orchestre de Paris. In 1997, he was appointed Chief Conductor of the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, and in 1998, Chief Conductor of the Dresden Semperoper. In summer 2025, Bychkov returned to Bayreuth to conduct Wagnerʼs Tristan und Isolde, and conducted the premiere of a new production of Tchaikovskyʼs Eugene Onegin at the Paris Opera in January 2026. In the 2026/2027 season he also returns to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in London.
Bychkov was named ‘Conductor of the Yearʼ by the International Opera Awards (2015) and, by Musical America (2022). He holds honorary titles with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Academy of Music. From 1 August 2026, Bychkov is Music Director Designate of the Paris Opera, assuming the title of Music Director in 2028.
Compositions
Antonín Dvořák
Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95, “From the New World”
Dvořák’s prestigious invitation to New York did not come out of nowhere. For years, his music had already been familiar in the United States, and American newspapers had been writing about his successes in Europe as a composer and conductor. Above all, however, for America Dvořák was iconic as a national composer. “Americans expect great things from me, and above all, supposedly, that I will show them the way to the promised land and to the realm of new, independent art, in short, how to create the music of a nation!! […] Certainly, this is an equally great and beautiful task for me, and I hope I shall have the good fortune to succeed with God’s help. There is more than enough material here,” wrote the composer to his friend Josef Hlávek after arriving in America. Dvořák did, in fact, delve into America’s musical material with great interest, as is revealed in an interview for the New York Herald: “Since I have been in this country I have been deeply interested in the national music of the negroes and the Indians. […] I intend to do all in my power to call attention to this splendid treasure of melody which you have.” Dvořák did not borrow the melodies, however. He created his own melodies using many of the characteristic features of folk songs that he combined with the essence of American folklore. In addition, the motifs from the new Symphony in E minor, Op. 95, “From the New World”, did not come into the world instantly in the form in which we now know them. This is documented by the composer’s sketches, in which the now famous themes appear still with many deviations from the final version. It is clear that during the compositional process, Dvořák was giving ever deeper expression to the “American spirit” that he wanted the music to embody, adding syncopations including a special rhythm known as the “Scotch snap”, highlighting the pentatonic scale etc. However, his new symphony was by no means an attempt to do everything differently from his previous symphonies. As he was finishing the score, he brought this up in a letter to his friend Göbl: “I’m just now finishing my Symphony in E minor, which will be strikingly different from my earlier ones, mostly in terms of melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic figures—just my orchestration has not changed, something in which I probably will not advance any further, nor do I wish to, and I have my reasons.”
The composer also mentioned the work’s tempestuous reception at the premiere at New York’s Carnegie Hall in December 1893 (Anton Seidl conducted the New York Philharmonic) in a letter to his publisher Fritz Simrock in Berlin: “The symphony’s success on December 15th and 16th was magnificent; the newspapers say that no composer has ever before achieved such a triumph. I was seated in a box, the hall was occupied by New York’s most elite public, and the people applauded so much that I had to wave from my box like a king to show my gratitude! Like Mascagni in Vienna (don’t laugh!). You know that I prefer to try to avoid such ovations, but I had to do this and show myself.” The composer did not inscribe the title “From the New World” on the score’s title page until a few months after finishing the work; it was on the very day that he handed the score over to the conductor for rehearsals. The title of the first work he had written in America gave rise to a great deal of comment in newspaper articles. Having read them, the composer supposedly remarked with a smile: “Well, it seems I have confused their minds a bit.”