Jerzy Semkow

Jerzy Semkow ranked among the leading conductors of late nineteenth-century Russian repertoire. Having studied under Erich Kleiber, Bruno Walter, and Tulio Serafin, he carried forward the distinctive vitality of that earlier generation into repertoire those mentors had largely bypassed, above all Russian Romantic works.

His training commenced at the State High School in Krakow. Beginning in 1951 he enrolled at the Leningrad Conservatory, where Boris Khaikin was his teacher, and subsequently continued in the West under Kleiber, Walter, and Serafin. In 1954 Semkow received a two-year post as assistant to Mravinsky at the Leningrad Philharmonic; he then spent two seasons conducting the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra. Appointed artistic director and principal conductor of the Warsaw National Opera in 1959, he remained until 1962. Between 1966 and 1976 he served as principal conductor of the Danish Royal Opera. His United States debut occurred in 1968 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra; he later appeared as guest conductor with the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic. He also led the London Philharmonic Orchestra and made his Covent Garden debut with Mozart’s Don Giovanni. From 1976 to 1979 he was music director of the St. Louis Symphony, after which he became music director of the Italian Radio Orchestra in Rome.

Semkow’s recording career, active from the early 1970s onward, encompassed multiple labels and included concertos by Nielsen and Chopin as well as Scriabin’s Symphony No. 2. His most enduring recorded legacy consists of the EMI accounts of Borodin’s Prince Igor and Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, both of which continue to be valued for their interpretive strength.