Symphony season unveiled
Kluxen programs many works close to his heart — so expect a strong Danish presence
On the evening of March 15, the Victoria Symphony unveiled its 2018-19 season to supporters in the University of Victoria’s Farquhar Auditorium.
It will be Christian Kluxen’s second season as the orchestra's music director, but the first to really bear his fingerprints in terms of repertoire and personnel. He said he has programmed many works that are close to his heart, and has included some friends among the featured composers and guest performers.
Indeed, the first piece on the season’s first program is by Hans Abrahamsen, who was Kluxen’s theory teacher at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, in his native Copenhagen, and another of his teachers, Giordano Bellincampi, will be among the season’s guest conductors.
Kluxen will also give a nod to his homeland when he performs Danish composer Carl Nielsen’s Symphony No. 4 (The Inextinguishable). At the same time, he expressed an admirable dedication to promoting Canadian composers and performers.
The season will be framed by ambitious undertakings: The opening concert will culminate in Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, while the final concert will close with the whole of Act 3 of Wagner’s opera Lohengrin. Concert performances of operas and operatic acts are now quite commonplace, and it is good to see this practice make its way here. (For one thing, it offers a great way for orchestras to expand their repertoire.)
Also welcome next season will be a concert marking the local debut of Naked Classics, an innovative “music discovery” series created by London-based composer and “animateur” Paul Rissmann. In this concert, Rissmann will offer an in-depth, multi-media exploration of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, then Kluxen will lead a complete performance of it.
The orchestra’s core programming next season will remain focused on major symphonies and concertos of the standard repertoire, though there will be less familiar fare, too, including works by W. F. and C. P. E. Bach, Rébel, Graun, Cherubini, Berg, Britten and Piazzolla, and a good deal of contemporary music spread among the various series.
Some 2018-19 programs are novel in organization — for instance, mixing repertoire that is very diverse chronologically or stylistically. In two of Kluxen’s own concerts, movements from different works will be performed in alternation, shuffled together like cards.
Among next season’s guest performers will be some making return visits, including conductors David Danzmayr and Bernhard Gueller, pianists Charlie Albright and Lorraine Min, the internationally renowned earlymusic violinist Monica Huggett and the Victoria Symphony’s former music director Tania Miller.
Pianist Stewart Goodyear, too, will return, to perform a suite of his own composition, Callaloo (the title refers to a leafy-greens dish that is a staple of Jamaican cuisine).
And the orchestra’s principal trumpet, Ryan Cole, will perform a concerto by Vancouver-based composer Marcus Goddard.
Making their Victoria Symphony débuts will be Bellincampi, acclaimed English violinist Tasmin Little and three admired soloists all in their twenties: Russian pianist Lukas Geniusas, Italian pianist Leonardo Colafelice and Israeli-Canadian cellist Daniel Hass.
For the second season in a row, the orchestra’s principal timpanist, Bill Linwood, who also co-founded and directs the Aventa Ensemble, will curate an especially rich and ambitious set of new-music programs in the Explorations Series, and will conduct most of the concerts himself.
The programming will include Nicole Lizée's Bondarsphere, a tribute to Canadian astronaut Roberta Bondar, and Jocelyn Morlock’s My Name is Amanda Todd, inspired by the Port Coquitlam teen who committed suicide in 2012 after being cyberbullied. (Amanda’s mother will be here for the occasion.)
The 2018-19 Pops Series will include a tribute to this year’s Leonard Bernstein centenary and a tribute to Queen, which, I’m told, is some sort of rock band. Of special note is another of the orchestra’s live performances of a film soundtrack, this time not for a silent movie but for The Wizard of Oz. And the orchestra will welcome a new principal pops conductor: the high-profile American composer, arranger and conductor Sean O’Loughlin.
The season will also include summer concerts around town, Concerts for Kids and a Christmas lineup that will feature the return of the popular Irish Tenors.
For concert dates, programming details and ticket information, read the 2018-19 season brochure at victoriasymphony.ca.