Interpretation of Feeling Is Seaman’s Goal as Conductor : Music: British maestro, who will lead Pacific Symphony tonight, is in the running to wield the orchestra’s baton on a permanent basis.

With the search for a new music director for the Pacific Symphony in full swing this season, orchestra members will be receiving a bounty of instruction from the parade of guest conductors trying out the podium.

But one thing they won’t hear from this week’s candidate, British conductor Christopher Seaman, is any provisos to “play the music exactly as written.”

“There is no such thing as just playing what is written,” Seaman said in a recent interview, sitting in the restaurant of the hotel where he’s staying during rehearsals. “You cannot play without expression, without your personality, you cannot play without feeling. Only a computer can play as written.”

This suggests that Seaman stands closer on the musical axis to the great German conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler and his notes-only-point-to-invisible-music approach than to Toscanini and his never-deviate-from-the-score-as-written philosophy.

And that is no coincidence.

“Furtwangler was one of the great inspirations of my life,” said Seaman, 47, who leads the Pacific tonight and Wednesday in a program of Shostakovich, Britten and Henri Vieuxtemps. “I remember as a teen-ager being given (a Furtwangler recording of) the Brahms’ Second and there was something about it that opened my eyes about what music could say. I adored it.

“I don’t ape Furtwangler. I couldn’t. . . . But I would like to think his inspiration showed in some way (in my conducting).”

Seaman said he finds the “soul of a piece” through “instinct, experience, inspiration from other people,” citing the likes of Furtwangler, Adrian Boult and Jascha Horenstein.

For all his attention to the styles of the great conductors, it may seem ironic that Seaman got to the podium by starting at the back of the orchestra.

“When I was 13, I had already decided I wanted to be a conductor,” Seaman said.

“(But) I was advised by a musician that I should play the timpani because you’re in most of the greatest pieces, you have a grandstand view of the conductor, you can hear the whole orchestra and you have enough hours’ rest to have a kind of overall view of what’s going on.

“So that’s how it all happened. I learned percussion as a means to an end.”

Seaman, who had studied music at King’s College, Cambridge, became the timpanist for the London Philharmonic in 1964.

“That was my first job, when I was 22,” he said.

He stayed for four years, then became assistant conductor with the BBC Scottish Symphony in Glasgow, Scotland. After eight years there, he began free-lancing as a conductor.

Since 1987, he has been conductor-in-residence with the Baltimore Symphony, which has just renewed his contract for three more years. In that capacity, Seaman leads 10 to 15 concerts a year, from children and pops programs to the classics.

With his commitment to Baltimore, as well as other conducting opportunities, could he be able to handle a joint appointment with the Pacific, should the search committee pick him as the lucky one?

“I don’t think that would be a problem--if it came to that,” he said. “In fact, most conductors do (hold joint appointments). . . . I haven’t met the orchestra yet, but having heard a lot about it, it is a very attractive situation here.”

For his debut with the Pacific, Seaman picked a demanding program.

“I had the feeling that something rather spectacular and not ordinary might have been a good idea,” he said. “So I suggested Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony, which I think is one of the absolute masterpieces.”

The conductor concedes that it is a “very dark” work.

“But it’s also extremely stretching for the orchestra. Everybody (in the orchestra) has something important and it is interesting to play.”

To balance “such a massive and intense” piece, Seaman programmed Britten’s “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra” (“I thought it would be a good idea to do one British work.. . . People expect that from a British conductor”), and Henri Vieuxtemps’ Violin Concerto No. 5, with soloist Anne Akiko-Meyers. Seaman has recorded the Bruch and Barber violin concertos with the 19-year-old soloist.

“In a way, (the program) is light and darkness,” Seaman said. “The first half, the Britten, is sort of light, colorful, a superbly constructed, optimistic piece. It is followed by a young soloist in the springtime of her life.

“Then, as a contrast to that, (there is) a rather dark symphony. Even when it’s fast and even when it’s brilliant--which it is--as usual with (Shostakovich), there is something slightly manic and ironic about it.”

How does Seaman work with an orchestra?

“I don’t say anything at all except ‘Good morning’ and ‘How nice to be here’--until they’ve played,” he said.

“If it’s a piece that many people don’t know--like this symphony--I would play it right through first because I know, from having been a player, that if the conductor plays 10 bars and then stops, you begin to get more and more anxious about . . . how it’s going to work.

“With good musicians, a lot of things are right the second time. So you’re very foolish if you stop the first time. It actually falls apart.

“But I go on instinct a lot. I can’t tell you how I do things all the time,” he added.

What he hopes will be evident in his conducting--to musicians, audiences and search-committee members alike--is the same thing he looks for in a musical experience. “When I go to any concert, what I look for first is warmth and humanity.”

But how much warmth can he expect from a 10-year-old orchestra that plays a limited number of concerts a year and which has just added several new players to its string section?

“A good conductor can change the sound of an orchestra in a few minutes,” Seaman said.

“He doesn’t know how he does it and the players don’t know how he does it. A lot of it is instinctive and body-language and vibes. I don’t know because I’m not a psychologist. But a lot of it is done on a very subconscious, instinctive level. . . .

“It includes certain things that you ask for, but what it really comes from is the conductor’s ability to communicate nonverbally, something about the conductor’s character and something about the musicians’ sensing that it really matters what they contribute. It’s an indefinable thing.

“The one thing is that everybody knows when it is happening and everybody knows when it’s not happening,” he said

It is not, however, solely a question of the orchestra’s technical proficiency, he said.

“Technique is the servant, not the master,” Seaman said. “The soul of the music is the master; technique is the servant.”

Christopher Seaman will conduct the Pacific Symphony in music by Henri Vieuxtemps, Britten and Shostakovich at 8 p.m. today and Wednesday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, in Costa Mesa. Featured soloist will be violinist Anne Akiko - Meyers. Tickets: $9 to $52. Information: (714) 973-1300.