Czech Philharmonic ⬩ Semyon Bychkov

“I am greatly looking forward to appearing in this programme on the same stage with the members of the Czech Philharmonic together with our young student orchestra. To me, there is symbolism in the combination of these two works because I regard Shostakovich as the Beethoven of the 20^th century. While Beethoven suffered physically, Shostakovich suffered mentally. In this sense, there is a special connection between the fates of the two men, just as there is between the two symphonies. In the case of Beethoven, his former hero Napoleon, to whom he had originally dedicated his Eroica, had now turned into his enemy, attacking Austria and even occupying Vienna in 1805. Originally, Shostakovich had to speak of his Fifth Symphony as ‘a Soviet composer’s response to just criticism’. But to his friends, he admitted that the conclusion was a satirical portrait of a dictator, deliberately empty but swimming in boundless flattery”, says Bychkov.