Victoria Symphony presents Kluxen & Hetherington - Beethoven Symphony No. 7

CHRISTIAN KLUXEN, conductor ALEX HETHERINGTON, mezzo-soprano

Friedrich Kuhlau: Elverhøj (Elves’ Hill) Overture Hector Berlioz: Les Nuits d’été (Summer Nights) Britta Byström: A Walk to Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 7 in A major

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.”