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The Czech Philharmonic’s latest programme under its Chief Conductor and Music Director Semyon Bychkov presented canonical works of the Romantic Germanic repertoire drawn from a relatively brief, 70-year period. The operatic, song and symphonic genres were represented by Wagner, Mahler and Mendelssohn respectively in a concert that highlighted diversity despite its seemingly narrow purview. Wagner’s opinions about Jews, Mendelssohn in particular, are notorious.

This February, a pair of electric guitars will slip into the sonic bloodstream of the Czech Philharmonic. Then, later in the season, in May, audiences at Prague’s Rudolfinum will hear a new cello concerto written for and performed by Anastasia Kobekina. Both moments centre on Bryce Dessner, the orchestra’s first ever composer-in-residence, in a role that brings several strands of his musical life into rare alignment.