Learn to code, but learn Beethoven too

di Filippo Simonelli - 29 Ottobre 2025

Inside Christian Blex’s artistic journey, between social sciences and conducting

When I first reached out to Maestro Christian Blex to arrange our interview, I stumbled upon his curriculum as it is customary to do. 

It was not the typical curriculum you would expect for the-next-big-thing in conducting type of musicians: his experiences bring together a rigorous, world class conducting education paired unexpectedly with social sciences. Computational social sciences, to be precise, the kind of social science that requires you to mutate at times into a coding geek working on programming softwares such as Python or the likes. In the specific case of Mr. Blex, who is set to receive his Ph.D. from Oxford with a dissertation on polarization in online discourses and communication, you need to be a coding geek trying to disentangle the web of conversation that surrounds social media and what not worldwide. 

As a sort of colleague of Mr. Blex myself and being all too aware of the hardships and struggles that this type of research brings about, I was first stunned by the courage – almost the incoscience, I would say – that he has proven in trying to fit together all his two careers into a single human experience: “Well – he said – the most satisfying thing, something I am very grateful for was to discover how little the two worlds were willing to interfere with each other. Nobody ever said to me something like “You must choose one of the two”, “You can’t do both”. There have been some moments in which conducting especially demanded my total attention, but my tutors and supervisors have always been very supportive in the process.”

Which could be, but most likely could not be a relatable experience, which makes it very remarkable on its own. But it gets all even more impressive if you imagine that all this was happening in a time when Christian has managed to get admitted to the Berliner’s Philarmonics Karajan Academy, before experiencing debuts with Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Gewandhaus Orchester, assisted Kirill Petrenko, with whom he had already worked in Berlin, at the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, along with Daniele Gatti, Jakub Hruša and Daniel Harding. Finally, he managed to win the Herbert von Karajan Young Conductors Award at the Salzburg Festival, just to go full circle. 

I reached out to him during his stay at the Cristofori Piano Festival in Padova last September, for which he was conducting the opening concert with Vadym Kholodenko as soloist in Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto – all while preparing for his final dissertation in Oxford; I know I could be redundant on this, but if you have ever scraped the surface of what it means to do academic research and have a “side job”, you would be as impressed as I am, imagining him wandering between complex coding syntaxes and the even more complex textures required to bring sound to life in a Beethoven concert. We had a long, enriching and thoughtful phone conversation that ranged from choosing repertoires for younger audiences to polarization in the public in concert halls.

This belongs to the kind of interviews that interviewers wish happened in person: too much to discuss or talk about, too many relevant topics, too interesting the character you are trying to extract from. It is the kind of situation in which the answers would have been enriched by some facial expression or inflection in the tone of voice that need to be experienced in person, that a phone conversation inevitably suppresses. Nonetheless, Christian Blex remains too much of a unique character not to be enjoyed talking to and hopefully reading from as well. 

So, you have been recently awarded the Herbert von Karajan Young Conductors Award at the Salzburg Festival. How has your life changed ever since?

It may be too soon to say, honestly. I have had some interviews and extra media attention, and some more concerts as part of the prize,
but let’s see what this will bring over the next months and years. I am enjoying the moment of course, but it’s too early to say it has changed my life up by now. 

Has this changed in some way your approach to repertoires, or even the way you work with established soloists such as M° Kholodenko?

Hopefully not, as I was already facing this kind of challenge before. We are already working very well on the repertoire of this concert, and we are just about to discuss other possible changes and approaches later as we go to have dinner together (giggles).

Speaking of the Emeperor Concerto specifically, which has so much prominence in the soloist role, how do you manage to balance the two sides of the coin?

Well, in fact our interpretation tends to make it more of a Symphonic piece rather than the typical concert with soloist and ensemble trying not to meddle too much… It is thanks to interpretations such as Vadym’s that the blending between the orchestra and the piano, which was Beethoven’s instrument after all, and it shows, fit perfectly together without creating any hiatus. 

It is thanks to interpretations such as Vadym’s that the blending between the orchestra and the piano, which was Beethoven’s instrument after all, fit perfectly together without creating any hiatus. 

I think it is peaceful to say that Beethoven’s Fifth Concerto is among the most overplayed pieces in history of performance… is it possible to say something meaningful and new at the same time with such a monument to confront with? 

It depends, of course, if you think you need to say something new in the sense that new means unheard of or rather a different combination of pre-existing stuff. I think, for instance, that the way orchestra and soloist interact can give room for personal interpretation as much as the blending of approaches of conductor and pianist can do, as well. It is up to personal sensibility to keep a respectful approach to the score while looking to find interpretation spaces in it. 

Not everything you perform, however, is Beethoven or has this kind of established tradition. Choosing a repertoire is also an exercise in communication. What spaces do you look for when choosing a new repertoire?

It is a very interesting point. Because it depends, of course, on many factors that precede the concert and the setting you are going to work in – the orchestra and your preferences, the engagement of a soloist, calendars and anniversaries and the choices of artistic directors. But it depends also on other factors that come after that: what kind of audiences am I going to engage with? Is it a new public or a traditional, supportive one?

The case that struck me the most is the one of younger audiences, because they are going to be concertgoers of the future. We tend to have this stereotypical image of young people looking for “easy-listening experiences”, something not to fear. Not many lengthy pieces, possibly overtly tonal… and yet, think of an adolescent: what could be a better fit with the torments of teenagers than the emotional depths and contradictions of a Mahler symphony, to say a name? I think it speaks volume to them, rather than mild decaffeinated repertoires we might perceive as fitter as an introduction for new listeners. 

We tend to have this stereotypical image of young people looking for “easy-listening experiences”.

Communicating to audiences is crucial indeed, and part of your job(s) is dealing with communication in many ways. How do you manage that with different audiences you encounter?

It is quite complicated paradoxically for a conductor because we always turn our back to the audience, sometimes physically and sometimes metaphorically too (laughs). We are envied by fellow musicians as we never have to face the public and their potential disappointment, you know (laughs, again) …

On a serious note, I think that we have countless opportunities to engage with audiences, with the communities they represent. Whenever possible, I like to have open rehearsals where you meet with audiences and hear what they have to say about the music you are playing, the emotions they are feeling and what they want to tell you again. You are forced to turn and face them, for real (I guess he may have smiled…). You don’t want to be lectured by the public on how to play a crescendo, if your dynamic choice is correct or not, but you do want to know if they feel enriched, if the experience is relevant to them and if they wish to come again and listen to your work. In the end, audiences are our real employers, and we have to come to terms with them. 

Both of your jobs require some degree of communication; in research, you study other’s communication but, in the end, you are required to communicate the result you come to as well. How difficult is it, and what are the intercepts between the two, if any?

Communicating for academia is a world apart from music, in theory. You have processes to undergo, difficult concepts to explain, tables with numbers and so on… music, on the other hand, has often more direct messages, as it is designed – though not always – to communicate something, or because it is communication in itself. As researchers we could find something meaningful in the way music structures its approach to the public, which is more and more vital as academia risks becoming marginalized in the spread of knowledge and in its reliability. But it is an open-ended question to me…

As you are approaching – hopefully – the end of your Ph.D. journey, you can call yourself as much a social scientist as a conductor. So, what do you think that musicians could learn from a computational social scientist – and the other way around?

Computational social sciences teach scientific rigour: a kind of rigour that makes every part of your work connected with previous and the following. But it is not so different from the kind of search for meaning and connection we go after when facing a score. I think that in my journey both paths have contributed to the other in a sense, despite trying to keep my mind focus on each one whenever needed. 

And lastly, from your peculiar but privileged standpoint, is it possible that classical music becomes something polarizing in any way, or that audiences themselves could face polarization?

Well, as long as we accept the fact that music has a long tradition of being political, yes of course. Think just of the Emperor Concerto, its history and what it meant by the time it was written! Of course, musicians and composers live in their times and at least part of their repertoires are shaped by the environment they live in. But I don’t think that this makes music something polarizing, as it aspires to be as universal as possible, to reach as much listeners as they are willing to, and that audiences themselves, although they may be part of a self-selection process, should be not seen as an expression of any polarization.