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Kluxen & Hetherington – Beethoven Symphony No. 7

September 13 @ 2:30 pm

A festive Danish curtain-raiser by Friedrich Kuhlau (Beethoven’s contemporary and a composer central to Denmark’s musical identity) sets the tone for a season that celebrates place and belonging in a time when national songs resonate more than ever. Berlioz, another nineteenth-century visionary who expanded the orchestra’s expressive range, turns that brightness inward with Les Nuits d’été, a tender farewell to summer sung by mezzo-soprano Alex Hetherington. Britta Byström’s A Walk to Beethoven, commissioned by Christian Kluxen during his Arctic Philharmonic tenure, answers across time with a luminous bridge leading naturally into Beethoven’s radiant Seventh Symphony—a “celebration of humanity being unworried and free.”

KNOW BEFORE YOU GO

Concert duration: Approx. 110 minutes including one 20 minute intermission.
Pre-Concert Chat: Please join us at 1:40 pm in the west lobby for a pre-concert chat featuring Music Director Christian Kluxen and VS CEO Matthew White.

Christian Kluxen, conductor

Christian Kluxen is now in his tenth season as Music Director of the Victoria Symphony in Canada, following a five-year tenure as Chief Conductor of the Arctic Philharmonic in Norway.

Kluxen has been described in the press as “a dynamic, charismatic figure” who “forms the music with an impressive vertical power of emotion and a focus on the grand form”, conducting “with exemplary clarity and a heavenly warmth”. He is recognized for his sincere and transparent leadership, innovative programming, and his bold, imaginative, and energetic interpretations, showcased both in his MD and guest work.

Alongside his many and varied commitments with the Victoria Symphony, recent and forthcoming guest engagements include Turku Philharmonic (where he was Principal Guest Conductor for three seasons) Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, Pacific Symphony, Oregon Symphony, Vancouver Symphony, Orchestre symphonique de Québec, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Copenhagen Philharmonic, Odense Symphony, Aalborg Symphony and Norrköping Symphony. A fruitful and inspiring relationship with the Arctic Philharmonic, whom Kluxen led for five years as Chief Conductor, resulted in numerous exhilarating performances of a wide variety of repertoire, as well as several acclaimed recordings.

Alex Hetherington, mezzo-soprano

Praised for her “wonderfully rich, warm sound” (Opera Canada), mezzo-soprano Alex Hetherington was recently named one of CBC Radio’s “30 Hot Classical Musicians Under 30.” A graduate of the Canadian Opera Company (COC) Ensemble Studio, she returned to the COC in 2025/26 as Stéphano in Amy Lane’s Roméo et Juliette and made her role debut as Dorabella in Vancouver Opera’s Così fan tutte.

In concert, she joined the National Ballet of Canada for Procession, records with the National Arts Centre Orchestra under Alexander Shelley, and makes debuts with Boston Baroque in Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass and with Les Violons du Roy in Mozart’s Requiem. Recent highlights include Ian Cusson’s Songs from the House of Death with the Victoria Symphony, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with Ottawa Chamberfest, and Duruflé’s Requiem with the Mandle Philharmonic.

Operatic credits include Siebel in Faust, Mercédès in Carmen, Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro (COC), Stewardess in Jonathan Dove’s Flight (Vancouver Opera), and more. Alex premiered the role of [Riley] in Nicole Lizée’ and Nicholas Billon’s R.U.R. A Torrent of Light (Tapestry Opera), earning her a 2022 Dora Mavor Moore Award. She holds graduate degrees from the University of Toronto.

Friedrich Kuhlau (1786—1832)
Elverhøj (Elves’ Hill) Overture, op.100

Hector Berlioz (1803—1869)
Les Nuits d’été, op.7 (Summer Nights)
1. Villanelle
2. Le spectre de la rose (The Ghost of the Rose)
3. Sur les lagunes: Lamento (On the Lagoons: Lament)
4. Absence
5. Au cimetière: Clair de lune (At the Cemetery: Moonlight)
6. L’île inconnue (The Unknown Island)

INTERMISSION

Britta Byström, (1977— )
A Walk to Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770—1827)
Symphony No. 7 in A major, op.92
I. Poco sostenuto – Vivace
II. Allegretto
III. Presto
IV. Allegro con brio

That there is a well-documented link between cognition and ambulation is impossible to deny. Hundreds of studies and a mountain of anecdotal evidence show that walking is both the perfect exercise for the human body and an effective way of clarifying the mind—and this is nowhere more evident than in the field of music.

Consider Franz Schubert. The composer of the song cycle Winterreise (Winter’s Journey) and the “Wanderer Fantasy” for solo piano was addicted to long strolls, his downcast face and short but sure stride familiar in every quarter of Vienna and the countryside beyond. Gustav Mahler was another Viennese rambler, his lengthy outings often reflected in the pace and duration of his symphonic works as well as, more obviously, in his semi-autobiographical Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer). The young Johann Sebastian Bach famously trekked 400 kilometres in the winter of 1705 to hear Dietrich Buxtehude play the organ in Lübeck—and then, presumably, trudged all the way home with a head full of inspiration. And, more recently, that champion of aleatory music John Cage abandoned the beaten track by pursuing wild mushrooms in the hills of northern California and upstate New York, a passion that put untold miles on his hiking boots.

But music’s Grand Perambulator is unquestionably Ludwig van Beethoven, whose daily walks offered him both solace and the psychic space necessary to compose on a truly transcendental level. “How happy I am to be able to walk among the shrubs, the trees, the woods, the grass, and the rocks!” he wrote in his journal. “For the woods, the trees and the rocks give man the resonance he needs.”

The Symphony No. 7 in A major is not the most “pedestrian” of Beethoven’s works; that would be the Symphony No.6 in F major, the “Pastoral” symphony, which has been variously described as a programmatic depiction of rural life or an attempt to convey, in sound, the exaltation that its composer experienced among “the woods, the trees and the rocks”.

Beethoven 7 is not idyllically calm or restful; early critics described it as a kind of sonic maelstrom. Richard Wagner, however, championed the score, finding physical verve in it where others had only found psychological distress, famously describing it as “the apotheosis of the dance”. Wagnerian bombast aside, he was not wrong. Victoria Symphony music director Christian Kluxen concurs, saying “It doesn’t seem like there are any big problems for [Beethoven] in the first movement, and it tuns into a really wonderful dance. And this whole symphony, if I could choose one word for this—and I’m not the one who has invented this—I would choose the word dance. Not just dance as in dancing, but the whole concept of humanity being unworried and free.”

Dancing, of course, is best done with others, but Beethoven preferred solitude on his rambles, just as he needed privacy to write. The Swedish composer Britta Byström, in contrast, likes the company of other composers, at least while exploring the early stages of her musical “walks”. So far, she’s sauntered along with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Anton Bruckner, and Johannes Brahms, among others, and in A Walk to Beethoven—commissioned by Maestro Kluxen while he was at the helm of Norway’s Arctic Philharmonic—she’s managed to get inside her legendary predecessor’s mind while making a vital, contemporary expression of her own.

“It was not my plan from the start to make so many walks,” Byström says in a conversation from Stockholm. “It was just an idea that came up about 10 years ago, in connection with a violin concerto that I wrote for a Swedish violin player, Malin Broman. In that concerto I had movements which I called ‘gates’, and then I had musical bridges between them, which I called ‘walks’. So my first walk appeared, actually, in my own music, but then Malin came up with the idea that maybe in this concert, which also included music by [Heinrich Ignaz Franz] Biber and Benjamin Britten, she wished to play it as a whole, without breaks between the works. So she asked me if I could write something to bring the whole concert together—and so I had the idea ‘Well, I can take my walks from the violin concerto and mix them with the other works on the program. That’s the reason why I wrote the Walk to Biber and the Walk to Britten.

“For me it has been a kind of gentle conversation with my predecessors and colleagues, even if they are not alive anymore,” she adds. “But also a kind of study for myself. When I wish to write a walk to a specific composer, of course I have to study their work very carefully. So I also learn a lot from that for myself.”

Astute listeners will recognize a quote from the Symphony No. 7 in A major’s second movement cunningly inserted into Byström’s walk. Thematic links to the other works on the program, Friedrich Kuhlau’s Elverhøj Overture and Hector Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’été are less overtly audible, although both were written in the early 19th century, within two decades of Beethoven’s death. All four works might share a certain outdoorsy ambiance: Kuhlau’s rousing fantasy is set on the “Elves’ Hill” of its title, while Les Nuits—which here will be sung by the Canadian mezzo-soprano Alex Hetherington—is a very consciously programmatic depiction of summer in a variety of romantic or fantastical settings.

If there are connections to be made, Byström is certain that Maestro Kluxen will find them, just as she was delighted with his take on A Walk to Beethoven, the premiere of which can be seen on YouTube.

“I like to hear different interpretations of my music, but of course I like some of them better than others,” the composer notes. “And what I liked very much with Christian is how he worked with the rhythmical aspect of the music. In the walks you can always hear a pace, a pulse, that holds the music together from beginning to end—and he found that pace very easily. He did that very well.”

Notes by Alex Varty

Hector Berlioz (1803—1869)
Les Nuits d’été, op.7 (Summer Nights)

Text & Translation

French source: Théophile Gautier

English source: Richard Stokes

I. Villanelle

Quand viendra la saison nouvelle,
When the new season comes,
Quand auront disparu les froids,
When the cold has gone,
Tous les deux nous irons, ma belle,
We two will go, my sweet,
Pour cueillir le muguet aux bois;
To gather lilies-of-the-valley in the woods;
Sous nos pieds égrenant les perles
Scattering as we tread the pearls of dew
Que l’on voit au matin trembler,
We see quivering each morn,
Nous irons écouter les merles
We’ll go and hear the blackbirds
Siffler!
Sing!

Le printemps est venu, ma belle;
Spring has come, my sweet;
C’est le mois des amants béni,
It is the season lovers bless,
Et l’oiseau, satinant son aile,
And the birds, preening their wings,
Dit ses vers au rebord du nid.
Sing songs from the edge of their nests.
Oh! viens donc sur ce banc de mousse,
Ah! Come, then, to this mossy bank
Pour parler de nos beaux amours,
To talk of our beautiful love,
Et dis-moi de ta voix si douce:
And tell me in your gentle voice:
Toujours!
Forever!

Loin, bien loin, égarant nos courses,
Far, far away we’ll stray from our path,
Faisons fuir le lapin caché,
Startling the rabbit from his hiding-place
Et le daim au miroir des sources
And the deer reflected in the spring,
Admirant son grand bois penché;
Admiring his great lowered antlers;
Puis, chez nous, tout heureux, tout aises,
Then home we’ll go, serene and at ease,
En paniers enlaçant nos doigts,
And entwining our fingers basket-like,
Revenons rapportant des fraises
We’ll bring back home wild
Des bois!
Strawberries!

II. Le spectre de la rose (The Ghost of the Rose)

Soulève ta paupière close
Open your eyelids,
Qu’effleure un songe virginal;
Brushed by a virginal dream;
Je suis le spectre d’une rose
I am the spectre of a rose
Que tu portais hier au bal.
That yesterday you wore at the dance.
Tu me pris encore emperlée
You plucked me still sprinkled
Des pleurs d’argent de l’arrosoir,
With silver tears of dew,
Et parmi la fête étoilée
And amid the glittering feast
Tu me promenas tout le soir.
You wore me all evening long.

Ô toi, qui de ma mort fus cause,
O you who brought about my death,
Sans que tu puisses le chasser,
You shall be powerless to banish me:
Toutes les nuits mon spectre rose
The rosy spectre which every night
À ton chevet viendra danser.
Will come to dance at your bedside.
Mais ne crains rien, je ne réclame
But be not afraid – I demand
Ni messe ni _De profundis_;
Neither Mass nor De Profundis;
Ce léger parfum est mon âme,
This faint perfume is my soul,
Et j’arrive du paradis.
And I come from Paradise.

Mon destin fut digne d’envie:
My destiny was worthy of envy;
Et pour avoir un sort si beau,
And for such a beautiful fate,
Plus d’un aurait donné sa vie,
Many would have given their lives –
Car sur ton sein j’ai mon tombeau,
For my tomb is on your breast,
Et sur l’albâtre où je repose
And on the alabaster where I lie,
Un poète avec un baiser
A poet with a kiss
Écrivit: Ci-gît une rose
Has written: Here lies a rose
Que tous les rois vont jalouser.
Which every king will envy.

III. Sur les lagunes (On the Lagoons)

Ma belle amie est morte:
My dearest love is dead:
Je pleurerai toujours;
I shall weep for evermore;
Sous la tombe elle emporte
To the tomb she takes with her
Mon âme et mes amours.
My soul and all my love.
Dans le ciel, sans m’attendre,
Without waiting for me
Elle s’en retourna;
She has returned to Heaven;
L’ange qui l’emmena
The angel who took her away
Ne voulut pas me prendre.
Did not wish to take me.
Que mon sort est amer!
How bitter is my fate!
Ah! sans amour, s’en aller sur la mer!
Alas! to set sail loveless across the sea!

La blanche créature
The pure white being
Est couchée au cercueil.
Lies in her coffin.
Comme dans la nature
How everything in nature
Tout me paraît en deuil!
Seems to mourn!
La colombe oubliée
The forsaken dove
Pleure et songe à l’absent;
Weeps, dreaming of its absent mate;
Mon âme pleure et sent
My soul weeps and feels
Qu’elle est dépareillée.
Itself adrift.
Que mon sort est amer!
How bitter is my fate!
Ah! sans amour, s’en aller sur la mer!
Alas! to set sail loveless across the sea!

Sur moi la nuit immense
The immense night above me
S’étend comme un linceul;
Is spread like a shroud;
Je chante ma romance
I sing my song
Que le ciel entend seul.
Which heaven alone can hear.
Ah! comme elle était belle,
Ah! how beautiful she was,
Et comme je l’amais!
And how I loved her!
Je n’aimerai jamais
I shall never love a woman
Une femme autant qu’elle.
As I loved her.
Que mon sort est amer!
How bitter is my fate!
Ah! sans amour, s’en aller sur la mer!
Alas! to set sail loveless across the sea!

IV. Absence

Reviens, reviens, ma bien-aimée;
Return, return, my sweetest love!
Comme une fleur loin du soleil,
Like a flower far from the sun,
La fleur de ma vie est fermée
The flower of my life is closed
Loin de ton sourire vermeil!
Far from your crimson smile!

Entre nos cœurs quelle distance!
Such a distance between our hearts!
Tant d’espace entre nos baisers!
So great a gulf between our kisses!
Ô sort amer! ô dure absence!
O bitter fate! O harsh absence!
Ô grands désirs inapaisés!
O great unassuaged desires!

Reviens, reviens, ma bien-aimée.
Return, return, my sweetest love!
Comme une fleur loin du soleil,
Like a flower far from the sun,
La fleur de ma vie est fermée
The flower of my life is closed
Loin de ton sourire vermeil!
Far from your crimson smile!

D’ici là-bas, que de campagnes,
So many intervening plains,
Que de villes et de hameaux,
So many towns and hamlets,
Que de vallons et de montagnes,
So many valleys and mountains
À lasser le pied des chevaux.
To weary the horses’ hooves.

V. Au cimetière (At the Cemetery)

Connaissez-vous la blanche tombe
Do you know the white tomb,
Où flotte avec un son plaintif
Where the shadow of a yew
L’ombre d’un if?
Waves plaintively?
Sur l’if, une pâle colombe,
On that yew a pale dove,
Triste et seule, au soleil couchant,
Sad and solitary at sundown
Chante son chant;
Sings its song;

Un air maladivement tendre,
A melody of morbid sweetness,
À la fois charmant et fatal,
Delightful and deathly at once,
Qui vous fait mal
Which wounds you
Et qu’on voudrait toujours entendre,
And which you’d like to hear forever,
Un air, comme en soupire aux cieux
A melody, such as in the heavens,
L’ange amoureux.
A lovesick angel sighs.

On dirait que l’âme éveillée
As if the awakened soul
Pleure sous terre à l’unisson
Weeps beneath the earth together
De la chanson,
With the song,
Et du malheur d’être oubliée
And at the sorrow of being forgotten
Se plaint dans un roucoulement
Murmurs its complaint
Bien doucement.
Most meltingly.

Sur les ailes de la musique
On the wings of music
On sent lentement revenir
You sense the slow return
Un souvenir;
Of a memory;
Une ombre, une forme angélique
A shadow, an angelic form
Passe dans un rayon tremblant,
Passes in a shimmering beam,
En voile blanc.
Veiled in white.

Les belles-de-nuit, demi-closes,
The Marvels of Peru, half-closed,
Jettent leur parfum faible et doux
Shed their fragrance sweet and faint
Autour de vous,
About you,
Et le fantôme aux molles poses
And the phantom with its languid gestures
Murmure, en vous tendant les bras:
Murmurs, reaching out to you:
Tu reviendras?
Will you return?

Oh! jamais plus, près de la tombe
Ah! nevermore shall I approach that tomb,
Je n’irai quand descend le soir
When evening descends
Au manteau noir,
In its black cloak,
Écouter la pâle colombe
To listen to the pale dove
Chanter sur la pointe de l’if
From the top of a yew
Son chant plaintif!
Sing its plaintive song!

VI. L’île inconnue (The Unknown Island)

Dites, la jeune belle,
Tell me, pretty young maid,
Où voulez-vous aller?
Where is it you would go?
La voile ouvre son aile,
The sail is billowing,
La brise va souffler!
The breeze about to blow!

L’aviron est d’ivoire,
The oar is of ivory,
Le pavillon de moire,
The pennant of watered silk,
Le gouvernail d’or fin;
The rudder of finest gold;
J’ai pour lest une orange,
For ballast I’ve an orange,
Pour voile une aile d’ange,
For sail an angel’s wing,
Pour mousse un séraphin.
For cabin-boy a seraph.

Est-ce dans la Baltique
Perhaps the Baltic,
Dans la mer Pacifique,
Or the Pacific
Dans l’île de Java?
Or the Isle of Java?
Ou bien est-ce en Norvège,
Or else to Norway,
Cueillir la fleur de neige
To pluck the snow flower
Ou la fleur d’Angsoka?
Or the flower of Angsoka?

Dites, la jeune belle,
Tell me, pretty young maid,
Où voulez-vous aller?
Where is it you would go?

Menez-moi, dit la belle,
Take me, said the pretty maid,
À la rive fidèle
To the shore of faithfulness
Où l’on aime toujours.
Where love endures forever.
– Cette rive, ma chère,
– That shore, my sweet,
On ne la connaît guère
Is scare known
Au pays des amours.
In the realm of love.

Où voulez-vous aller?
Where is it you would go?
La brise va souffler.
The breeze is about to blow!

Kluxen & Hetherington – Beethoven Symphony No. 7

September 13 @ 2:30 pm

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