As a pupil of the legendary Ilya Musin, Semyon Bychkov belongs to the select group of great conductors who were trained at the Leningrad (now St Petersburg) Conservatory.
In 1975 Bychkov moved to the United States to build up an international career free of the limitations of the Soviet regime. He made his name as the music director of the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. Later he became chief conductor of the Orchestre de Paris, the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, and the Semperoper in Dresden. Since the 2018-2019 season he is chief conductor of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, with which he is working on a complete Mahler cycle.
Bychkov is regularly invited by orchestras such as the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and the symphony orchestras of Chicago and San Francisco. He holds the Klemperer Chair of Conducting at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and the Gunther Wand Chair with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The International Opera Awards named Semyon Bychkov 2015’s Conductor of the Year.
Apart from the symphonic repertoire opera plays an important part in his career. In 2003 Bychkov made his debut in Covent Garden with Elektra by Richard Strauss. He conducts its productions with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Opéra de Paris, the Viennese State Opera, the Scala in Milan and the Salzburg Festival. In August 2024, he conducted Wagner's Tristan und Isolde at the Bayreuth Festival.
He has been a very regular guest of the Concertgebouw Orchestra since 1984, most recently in June 2023 with Mendelssohn’s ‘Scottish’ Symphony and the Dutch premiere of Glanert’s Prague Symphony.