Conductor Semyon Bychkov on Rachmaninoff

Semyon Bychkov is an ardent advocate of Rachmaninoff's and has idolized the composer since his childhood. He writes, “I played his piano music, I read everything I could find on him, including his letters. It was an obsession. And then I found myself at the Leningrad Conservatory, the youngest of all the conductors, and the other students were looking at me as if I was a baby brother. And they told me, very nicely, that one day I would grow out of my love of Rachmaninoff. I could never understand - why I would want to?!

On Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 2 he writes, "I love the Second Symphony, which of course is a very different Rachmaninoff, a young man with absolutely crazy talent. The orchestration is extraordinary: everything is overblown, yet I don't care, because I think a man of that age is supposed to overdo things. It would be a pity to see someone so young acting old and wise."

Bychkov conducts the San Francisco Symphony in an all-Rachmaninoff program this Friday through Sunday (November 6-8) in Davies Symphony Hall. The concert includes The Bells, featuring soprano Nuccia Focile in her SF Symphony debut, tenor Frank Lopardo, baritone MIkhail Petrenko, and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, as well as Symphony No. 2 in E minor.

For more information on the November 6-8 concerts click here.

Semyon Bychkov returns to conduct the San Francisco Symphony November 12-14 featuring Henri Dutilleux's Metaboles, the debut of French cellist Gautier Capucon in Schumann's Cello Concerto in A minor, and Sibelius' Symphony No. 5 in E-flat major. For more infomration on these concerts click here.