Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sackett. My guest today was giving

public piano recitals by the age of six. Simeon Bichikov's prodigious musical talent was encouraged

and developed by a Soviet system which took great pride in cultural excellence. But it demanded loyalty in return. And when the young

Bichkov, a precocious young conductor in Leningrad's renowned music academy, aired views that

were critical of the party, and in particular the anti-Semitism experienced by his family,

his prospects dimmed. In the end, he was granted an exit visa and in his

early 20s headed for the United States. Over the last five decades, he has forged an extraordinary

career working with some of the world's finest orchestras and opera houses from New York to

London, Milan and Madrid. He made his home in France,

but in recent years he served as chief conductor and director of music at the Czech Philharmonic

Orchestra based in Prague. Not surprisingly, the Russian invasion of neighboring Ukraine touched

him deeply. He immediately voiced his pain and discussed at

Vladimir Putin's actions, but he has also spoken out against some of the decisions taken to block

Russian art and artists from platforms in the West. When politics takes center stage, is art, inevitably the loser? Well, Simeon Bichikov joins me now.

Welcome to Hard Talk. Thank you. You are like all of the great musical maestroes. You're peripatetic.

Your career takes you all around the world. You're constantly traveling. Is there one place that you

could point to and say that has done the most to define you as a person and a d'artist?

No, I don't think so. Maybe because my destiny made it so that I was born in Russia. I lived there

22 years before emigrating to America.

Leningrad was the city.

When it was called Leningrad.

Today, St. Petersburg. So the DNA, the roots are there, have always been, always will be.

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