The Czech Philharmonic and its Chief Conductor and Music Director Semyon Bychkov present a new recording of Bedřich Smetana's masterpiece Má Vlast (My Homeland), marking both the bicentenary of Smetana's birth and the 2024 Year of Czech Music, celebrated every decade since Smetana's 100th anniversary in 1924. Composed between 1874 and 1878, Má Vlast stands as a potent symbol of the Czech Republic's turbulent political history and played a defining role in the Czech national movement, contemplating the landscape, history, and legends of Bohemia across six symphonic poems, most famously in the Moldau. For Bychkov, who was born in Russia before emigrating to the United States and later settling in France, the question of homeland carries particular personal resonance — how to take pride in a heritage's best qualities while reckoning with its darker chapters. That perspective, developed over years of close collaboration with the orchestra, lends this recording added intimacy and urgency. The Czech Philharmonic, one of the world's great orchestras and long celebrated for its command of Czech repertoire, continues its PENTATONE partnership with Bychkov, who began his tenure in the 2018/19 season and has since led the orchestra through an acclaimed ongoing Mahler cycle as well as Folk Songs (2023) with Magdalena Kožená and Sir Simon Rattle.