Czech Philharmonic • Vienna

“I was seven years old the first time I attended an orchestra concert. I was so enchanted by Haydn that I got goosebumps. That was the first time I sensed what a powerful means of communication music represents”, recalls the pianist Beatrice Rana, who herself appeared as a soloist with orchestra just a year after that turning point in her life. Her life was filled with music from birth: she grew up in a family of pianists and begin playing piano at age four. Although no one pushed a musical career on her, she decided to study at the Nina Rota Conservatoire in Monopoli under the guidance of Benedetto Lupo, and she also attended a composition course taught by Marco della Sciucca. Her desire to improve her skill as a pianist took her to Hannover for studies with Arie Vardi, then back to Italy to study under Benedetto Lupo, this time at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia.

She came to the attention of musicians worldwide at age 18 by winning the Montreal International Competition and especially two years later in 2013, earning the silver medal and the audience prize at the famed Van Cliburn International Competition. Although that success launched her career on the world’s concert stages (mainly in America—she had already been giving concerts in Europe), it also gave her a feeling of great responsibility. She once revealed in an interview that for a whole season after the competition, she was living with the feeling that she had to prove herself deserving of her competition success. However, she overcame the crisis: “Suddenly I realised that I was no longer in the world of competitions, but one of concerts. And that is something much better.” Today, we can hear her at the most famous concert venues, from Royal Albert Hall to Carnegie Hall. She has played at the BBC Proms and, for example, at the Verbier Festival. She has appeared with such conductors as Yannick Nézet-Seguin, with whom she issued an album of piano concertos by Clara and Robert Schumann last year, Manfred Honeck, Paavo Järvi, and Antonio Pappano. It is with the latter that she has long collaborated with both in concert and on recordings (Rana is an exclusive Warner Classics recording artist). Their first recording with piano concertos by Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky was honoured as the “Editor’s Choice” by the magazine Gramophone and as “Newcomer of the Year” by the BBC Music Magazine. Her solo recordings have also earned awards: her Goldberg Variations (2017) won prizes for “Young Artist of the Year” (Gramophone) and “Discovery of the Year” (Edison), and the album of Stravinsky and Ravel won the Diapason d’Or and the Choc de l’Année Classica.

Beatrice Rana is acclaimed for the delicacy of her touch, her naturalness, and her intelligence. “To me, she is a revelation. Her level of musical maturity and technical security is amazing for such a young person”, says Antonio Pappano, describing the quality of the 31-year-old pianist’s playing, which the Prague public already experienced at the Rudolf Firkušný Festival in 2019, when Beatrice Rana intoxicated the Rudolfinum in a programme including Chopin etudes. 

Her artistic career does not stop at the piano, however: in 2017 in Lecce, her birthplace at the heart of Apulia, she established the chamber music festival “Classiche Forme”, which soon took its place among Italy’s leading summer events. She is also the artist director of the Orchestra Filarmonica di Benevento. She currently lives in Rome.

Jongmin Park, South Korean bass and native of Seoul, studied singing at the Korea National University of Arts. As a member of the Academy of La Scala, he was guided by Mirella Freni, Luciana Serra, Luigi Alva, and Renato Bruson.

Between 2010-2013 seasons, he was a member of the ensemble at the Hamburg State Opera where he sang leading roles such as Sarastro, Colline, Sparafucile.

From the 2013-14 season, he was invited to join the ensemble at the Vienna State Opera where he performed the roles of Sir Giorgio (I Puritani), Vodník (Rusalka), Ramfis, Gremin, Basilio.

In 2014 he debuted at the ROH Covent Garden as Colline, and appeared at the BBC Proms in London and at the City of London Festival 2014.

He won the International Tchaikovsky Competition, the Song Prize winner at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World 2015 and the Birgit Nilsson Wagner-Award at the Operalia.

His concert engagements have included Beethoven’s Symphony Nr. 9 with the London Symphony Orchestra, Mozart’s Vesperae solennes de Confessore at La Scala’s annual Christmas concert, Mozart’s Requiem at the Lech Classic Festival, Verdi’s Messa da Requiem with the KBS Symphony in Seoul, and Rossini’s Stabat Mater with the NHK Symphony in Tokyo.

He has performed solo recitals in Munich, Frankfurt and the Musikverein in Vienna. He will make his Wigmore Hall debut in 2017.

In addition to conducting at Prague’s Rudolfinum, Semyon Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic in the 2023/2024 season, took the all Dvořák programmes to Korea and across Japan with three concerts at Tokyo’s famed Suntory Hall. In spring, an extensive European tour took the programmes to Spain, Austria, Germany, Belgium, and France and, at the end of year 2024, the Year of Czech Music culminated with three concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York. 

Among the significant joint achievements of Semyon Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic is the release of a 7-CD box set devoted to Tchaikovsky’s symphonic repertoire and a series of international residencies. In 2024, Semjon Byčkov with the Czech Philharmonic concentrated on recording Czech music – a CD was released with Bedřich Smetanaʼs My Homeland and Antonín Dvořákʼs last three symphonies and ouvertures.

Bychkovʼs repertoire spans four centuries. His highly anticipated performances are a unique combination of innate musicality and rigorous Russian pedagogy. In addition to guest engagements with the world’s major orchestras and opera houses, Bychkov holds honorary titles with the BBC Symphony Orchestra – with whom he appears annually at the BBC Proms – and the Royal Academy of Music, who awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in July 2022. Bychkov was named “Conductor of the Year” by the International Opera Awards in 2015 and, by Musical America in 2022.

Bychkov began recording in 1986 and released discs with the Berlin Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio, Royal Concertgebouw, Philharmonia Orchestra and London Philharmonic for Philips. Subsequently a series of benchmark recordings with WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne featured Brahms, Mahler, Rachmaninov, Shostakovich, Strauss, Verdi, Glanert and Höller. Bychkov’s 1993 recording of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin with the Orchestre de Paris continues to win awards, most recently the Gramophone Collection 2021; Wagner’s Lohengrin was BBC Music Magazine’s Record of the Year (2010); and Schmidt’s Symphony No. 2 with the Vienna Philharmonic was BBC Music Magazine’s Record of the Month (2018).

Semyon Bychkov has one foot firmly in the culture of the East and the other in the West. Born in St Petersburg in 1952, he studied at the Leningrad Conservatory with the legendary Ilya Musin. Denied his prize of conducting the Leningrad Philharmonic, Bychkov emigrated to the United States in 1975 and, has lived in Europe since the mid-1980’s. In 1989, the same year he was named Music Director of the Orchestre de Paris, Bychkov returned to the former Soviet Union as the St Petersburg Philharmonic’s Principal Guest Conductor. He was appointed Chief Conductor of the WDR Symphony Orchestra (1997) and Chief Conductor of Dresden Semperoper (1998).