Open your heart to the music

On long flights, Christian Knapp will pull out the director's score of a composition he is preparing to conduct. Sometimes conversation with a curious seatmate ensues, and more often than not, his neighbor will say, "I don't know much about classical music. I don't appreciate it."

Knapp said, "I always think, 'What's there to know?' You open your heart, you listen to it. You see what ideas it brings to you."

Knapp is the eighth of nine candidates to audition for the position of music director of the Richmond Symphony. His grandmother, an accomplished pianist, began giving him lessons when he was 4, and his father was "adamant" about exposing him to cultural experiences, including concerts by the Chicago Symphony under the direction of Sir Georg Solti.

"It was somewhat inevitable that I would go to conservatory for piano," Knapp said in a recent phone interview.

He spent years of training and study in such rarefied atmospheres as the New England Conservatory and St. Petersburg State Conservatory in Russia, where he earned a postgraduate diploma in conducting. However, he believes that anyone can relate to classical music because it deals with "timeless questions of humanity."

"I think [those people on the airplane] know everything they need to know, just by being human," Knapp said.

As a conductor, part of his job is to advocate for the music itself, he said. One way of doing this is to talk to audiences about his feelings for the music he's conducting in order to "encourage greater igniting of the imagination and draw parallels to [a listener's'] life."

At the same time Knapp was studying piano at the New England Conservatory of Music, he also pursued a degree in philosophy at Tufts University. "Philosophy turned me into a musician as much as conservatory did," he said.

Focusing on the philosophy of aesthetics was "another way of thinking about music," he said. "I always found a great deal of connection between philosophy and music."

On the other hand, his experience making music with other people at conservatory turned him into a conductor. He realized he thrived on the interaction and stimulation of collaboration, and by the time he completed his undergraduate work, "I was sure [conducting] was where I belonged."

Knapp is fascinated by the role of unspoken communication in musical collaboration.

"Most orchestras have four rehearsals for a program. That's in no way enough time to discuss every single bar of music, the many levels of nuance and meaning," he said. So a lot of communication happens with gesture, in the moment of performance.

"For example, in the way an oboe player takes a breath before a solo. Or the way I use my hands," he said. "There's almost a greater beauty in this imperfect but perfect world of unspoken communication."

Concerts, then, are not mechanical playbacks. "I believe in having a direction but without a fixed route, so there's freedom for flexibility in performance," Knapp said. "That keeps it alive and fresh. It's thrilling when the communication is flowing very well."

Audiences are part of this communication, too, he said. The energy that listeners bring to a concert hall is a vital contribution to any performance.

Knapp conducted a pops concert with the Richmond Symphony yesterday.

On Saturday and next Sunday, he'll conduct a Masterworks program that includes Berlioz's "Symphony fantastique." "I'm going through a craze for Berlioz," Knapp said. "I've had a lot of time to think about the audacity, the bravery, the creativity of this composer. There is a great danger in trying to make conventional the unconventionality of Berlioz."

The Masterworks program also includes Debussy's "Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune" and Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No.3, performed by guest pianist Jeremy Denk.