Semyon Bychkov. "Russian culture, its language, its noble traditions are in my blood… but there are moments in life when silence in the face of evil becomes its accomplice." Photograph/Marco Borggreve Two boys were struck by musical coups de foudre, one in Bohemia, the other in the former Soviet Union, a century apart. Their respective epiphanies are elements of the back story of conductor Semyon Bychkov’s recording with the Czech Philharmonic of Gustav Mahler’s nine symphonies. Bohemia, now in the Czech Republic, belonged to the Austro-Hungarian empire when Mahler (1860-1911) grew up there. The boy fled into the streets to...