Summer Night concert, VPO/Bychkov - BBC Four

[Keraulophone]

'Overshadowing Yakov Kreizberg's career and personal life, however, was a tangled tale of bitter sibling rivalry. Kreizberg, who took his mother’s surname for professional purposes, and Semyon Bychkov, his fellow conductor and elder brother by seven years, had reportedly not spoken for many years.

His brother had left the Soviet Union in 1975, and Kreizberg was anxious to do likewise, fearing that his sibling’s defection would affect his career in Leningrad. There was also the chilling prospect of military service. “In another couple of years I would have been drafted, and at that time it would have meant Afghanistan,” he recalled in 1999.

The problem was that his father, May Bychkov, was a prominent Soviet military scientist and had been told by the KGB that he would never be allowed out. As a result, his parents divorced to allow the teenager and his mother — a French teacher — to emigrate.'

from Telegraph obit.

[Stanfordian]

His much-missed conductor brother Yakov Kreizberg was much better looking. A sad tale - I saw Yakov twice in Cardiff, both times conducting Mahler 5 (with different orchestras).

Hiya Richard,

Last month I attended a concert at Dresden Semperoper with the Concertgebouw conducted by Semyon Bychkov featuring Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances with Tchaikovsky Romeo and Juliet overture, a Rachmaninov orchestral song and Tchaikovsky’s 'Letter Scene' sung by Kristine Opolais. Although it was one of shortest concert programmes I'd ever attended he was so knackered at the end I though he might collapse.

[ardcarp]

I thought he struck an air of geniality throughout the Vienna concert. Ravel's Bolero hardly needs conducting and (as I hinted earlier) the VPO can play Wiener Blut on autopilot. So after the Poulenc and Ravel's D&C, not much cause to be knackered.