On Oct. 16, Christian Kluxen led the first Classics Series concert of the Victoria Symphony’s season. His performance, like that of some other recent guest conductors, doubled as an audition for the position of the orchestra’s music director, which Tania Miller will vacate next August.
This week, another guest conductor (and music-director candidate) was scheduled to launch the orchestra’s new Masterworks Monday series, but had to cancel, so Kluxen volunteered to stay in town and serve as a replacement.
In between these two guesting gigs, his status changed suddenly and completely. On Thursday, the Victoria Symphony unexpectedly announced that, after searching for three years and considering scores of candidates, it had chosen Kluxen as its 10th music director.
Kluxen, 34, a native of Copenhagen, Denmark, has won conducting prizes and boasts some noteworthy international experience in both symphonic music and opera.
He made his Victoria Symphony début in April, in another Classics program, and has now signed a four-year contract that will begin with the 2017-18 season.
In his two recent concerts, the programs included overtures by Mozart and Beethoven, Haydn’s Symphony No. 82, and Beethoven’s Fifth. Judging from these appearances, the orchestra has chosen a promising young leader, one with evident talent and technical skill and a big, potent, extrovert personality. He has reportedly made a very positive impression on the orchestra, and local audiences clearly find him engaging, charismatic, even endearing.
The orchestra seems energized under Kluxen’s baton. He is a dynamo, with an intensely physical conducting style and apparently infectious enthusiasm. He is firmly in control without coming across as too tightly wound, and seems emotionally honest and open. His recent performances were vital and vivid, though on occasion he was content merely to convey speed and noise. (The easy way out is sometimes the one that looks the most strenuous.) Still, his work was full of nuance and colour, warmth and wit.
In concertos by Haydn, C.P.E. Bach and, especially, Shostakovich, he also proved to be a sensitive accompanist.
In both concerts, Kluxen took up the microphone to give pre-performance talks, and gave the impression that he had been prodded to do so by the orchestra. I hope he resists such prodding in the future. We hear great quantities of talk at many local concerts, talk that is rarely enlightening enough to justify the expense in time, and I know from private polling that I am hardly alone in wearying of it.
But perhaps mine is a minority view. As Kluxen chatted cheerfully and aimlessly on the podium, his audiences plainly thought him a “character” and responded to every remark, however inane, with gales of laughter.
Kluxen’s informal style of concert dress, however, is genuinely refreshing.
Anyway, we cannot judge a music director on the basis of a couple of guest shots, one of them as a late replacement.
So it remains to be seen: How will Kluxen’s personality wear with the musicians over long periods of contact in rehearsal? What, and how high, are his standards, in terms of both performance and the orchestra’s long-term development? Is he a probing as well as an exciting interpreter? What range of music does he command? What is his approach to repertoire, in terms of both individual programs and seasons? Will he have enough curiosity and force of personality to confront the orchestra’s over-reliance on tired standard repertoire? Will he share Miller’s commitment to new music, especially Canadian music? What role does he see himself and his orchestra playing within the community? Will he actually live here and become a real presence in Victoria or be merely a perpetual guest?
Only time will tell.
However, from what we have already seen of his natural gifts and musicianship, his presence on the podium, his capabilities as a leader, his insights as an interpreter, and his effect on audiences, the signs are good.