Semyon Bychkov conducts Strauss and Shostakovich — With Mao Fujita

At the magnificent Dvořák Hall, world-renowned maestro Semyon Bychkov conducts the Czech Philharmonic in an unmissable program of Richard Strauss and Shostakovich, with award-winning pianist Mao Fujita!

Fifty years after the death of Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich, the Czech Philharmonic fills Prague's historic concert hall with the achingly intense and heartbreaking sounds of his Symphony No. 8. The second of his three “War Symphonies,” and deemed his “most tragic work” by friend Isaac Glikman, the “Stalingrad” Symphony paints a harrowing picture of the suffering endured by those living under Stalin’s totalitarian regime during the Second World War. In the first half of the concert, Mao Fujita lends his “poetic sense of pulse and eloquent, insightful, fearless articulation" (The Times) to Richard Strauss’s Burleske in D minor. Dismissed as “complicated” and “unplayable” in 1886 by Hans von Bülow, for whom the piece was written, the Burleske was revised some years later and now serves as a dazzling showpiece that highlights the technical mastery and unfailing artistry of virtuosos like Fujita.

Photo © Petra Hajská