David Shifrin

The man behind the clarinet is also the president of the democracy that is The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In his office -- which is not oval but rectangular -- and using a laptop computer on the road and at home, David Shifrin pieces together the enormous jigsaw puzzle of people and music, works and composers, programs and performances that comprise the Chamber Music Society. He has been Artistic Director since 1992, having become an Artist Member in 1989. A native of Kew Gardens Hills, Queens, Mr. Shifrin was a recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. As a soloist he is in demand with orchestras all over the world, and he appears frequently with such ensembles as the Emerson, Guarneri and Tokyo quartets. He is also Artistic Director of Chamber Music Northwest, a summer festival in Oregon. Among the works he has commissioned are John Corigliano's Soliloquy for Clarinet and String Quartet; he has also premiered works by Stephen Albert and Ezra Laderman. One of his recordings earned a 1989 Grammy nomination, and his Mozart Clarinet Concerto with the Mostly Mozart Orchestra was named "Record of the Year" in 1987 by Stereo Review Magazine. Due for release shortly is a disc of clarinet quintets he commissioned of Bright Sheng, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Joan Tower and Bruce Adolphe; another release due out contains Weber's complete chamber music with clarinet. Mr. Shifrin is on the faculty of Yale University.

You played stickball too?
DS: Yes. I was looking for a Spaldeen for my kid the other day and the closest I could find were blue racquetballs. I had a very middle-class, outer-borough, public-school childhood; having music as strong as it was in the public schools 35 years ago is why I'm a musician now. After one year in high school I got a scholarship to go live in the woods and play music at the Interlochen Arts Academy for two years. That's how I got to Carnegie Hall, at 15. Five years later Stokowski hired me to play in his American Symphony at Philharmonic Hall.

When did you decide to become a professional musician?
DS: After a rehearsal at Interlochen. That was a wonderful place for me; it was the first time I had been around music all day every day for a couple of months, and I saw how much better I was getting by practicing with that intensity. I heard people around me talk about people who played music for a living instead of opening a store or being a doctor; I decided to do that and never wavered from it.

What's the first piece you fell in love with?
DS: Mozart's Clarinet Concerto. That was the work Benny Goodman was trying to perfect in the movie to impress his wife, played by Donna Reed. The Mozart was the first great solo work for the clarinet, and it's still the greatest piece for the instrument in the repertoire. It was also used in a lot of other films, Out of Africa being the most recent. Even my e-mail address is KV 622, which is the Köchel number of the concerto, but I'm not obsessed about it or anything!

Is there something a teacher imparted to you that you make a point of sharing with your students?
DS: You have to play virtually every day whether you're making programs for a chamber music organization, or touring; you even have to plan your vacations so you have a decompression period when you practice again before you play in public. Guitarist Chet Atkins said that if you don't see your instrument for a few days it doesn't know you anymore! Another thing is that the instrument is just a vehicle to make music and to be able to use your voice to interpret what the composer is saying. Achievement instrumentally is not an end unto itself; maintaining the highest level of technique is a tool to interpret and express the music. And it's essential that the work you're performing, studying or practicing be your favorite work during that time. You have to get into musical character as it were, the way an actor does. You wind up living that work while you're involved with it; you can't be thinking, I'd rather be doing Mozart.

Do you allow yourself to favor certain composers or does your job prevent you from making that kind of statement?
DS: I think I make that statement by the programs I put before the public. It's tempered with a sense of responsibility to program music that I might not feel the most comfortable with playing or even listening to occasionally but that I think is important and should be heard. Certainly it's a statement that I admire a composer if we commission a work to be written, or play works of that composer season after season.

Are there recordings you've made in which you really feel you nailed it?
DS: I don't listen to my recordings that much after they're released. Occasionally I do to check where I was and where I am. I'm closest to my Mozart record -- the concerto and the quintet on one album. I'd have to say that's the one I identify with most.

What is vibrato, when do you use it, and who gives you the license?
DS: That's particularly controversial with the clarinet. In Germany it's verboten for the most part to use vibrato on the clarinet, whereas in Czechoslovakia it's used with great profusion. In this country, orchestrally it's generally not accepted. I was principal clarinetist in the Cleveland Orchestra in the mid-'70s, and my predecessor and teacher, Robert Marcellus, one of the greatest clarinetists of all time, was 100 percent opposed to vibrato and on that subject we didn't agree. The beauty of the clarinet is its versatility and ability to imitate other sounds. In addition to its own unique qualities the clarinet can sound very much like the human voice, a violin, a French horn; it can make an attack like a piano or sneak in from nowhere. I've always loved the ability to make a lot of different sounds. An excruciatingly beautiful phrase in a work of Schubert, Brahms or Mozart, when there's a tremendous amount of color in a moment of harmonic tension or leading to an especially poignant resolution... it seems like a crime not to use vibrato to enhance the phrase and make it a fully satisfying and beautiful realization of the melodic line. I often wish I could hear a recording of the clarinetists that Mozart and Brahms wrote for. With Mozart being a great composer of opera, I can't imagine playing on the clarinet in a way that's too dissimilar from how a singer would sing with vibrato. And Brahms was lured out of retirement when he heard Richard Mühlfeld, who before being a clarinetist was a violinist, and I can't imagine that he would not keep some of the same stylistic techniques and ways of expression, which certainly must have included vibrato.

What are your passions outside of music?
DS: My three-and-a-half year old son. Having a child that age at this stage of my life -- I'm 47 -- is the most wonderful thing I can remember happening. There were periods when I loved playing tennis and traveling; now I like to watch my son swing a baseball bat, which he loves to do.

Is fatherhood instinctual?
DS: I wouldn't have known until recently but I think it is. It's also informed by experience. I've remembered things in the last three years that I haven't thought about in 30 years. It's quite an amazing experience for me because I've come to it later than most.

Is there a movie role you'd like to have played?
DS: When I was 14 I would love to have been James Bond.

With all the responsibilities you have, do you feel as if you're at the saturation point?
DS: There's a balance between filling your life up with as many things as you want to do and making sure that those things have the quality you want them to have. I have to confess to being right on the edge of having so much that I have to make sure I give everything the time it deserves. I love to teach, for instance, but I've taken off a year to devote more time to the Chamber Music Society and playing the instrument. I have my summer festival in Oregon; beyond that I'm starting to say no to some lovely invitations to teach or play a festival.

How else has being Artistic Director changed your life?
DS: I've gotten to learn a lot more about a lot more music than I would if I were just approaching it from the standpoint of a clarinetist. I enjoy being involved in the larger realization of music; this has been a very satisfying way to achieve that without the traditional role as orchestra conductor. I've learned a great deal about the creative process working with composers and performers and talking to them about their dreams and their preferences. I've also learned how a group of people can make important things happen in an organization with a volunteer board that's responsible for raising money and seeing that the organization is structured to enable us to do what we do. And I've enjoyed working with Jacqui Taylor and the staff to make great music come alive.

How about the privilege of commissioning a piece?
DS: Oh, that's an enormous responsibility as well as a privilege. My role as a musician has always been an interpretive one, and to be able to work with people who are seriously and passionately creating the music we play has been very meaningful.

What considerations do you bring to bear in bringing on a new Artist Member?
DS: Would CMS be better, the same or worse if this person were an Artist Member. We look for a consummate performer on their instrument, as good as anybody in the world, with a tremendous commitment to chamber music and a willingness to commit to CMS, in return for an ongoing association to realize musical projects of mutual importance.

Are there people whose musical gifts would qualify them but who just wouldn't fit into the mix?
DS: Yes. There have been a number of performers who on the surface seemed to be perfect candidates but for one reason or another, musical or personal, it wasn't in their or our best interest to have an ongoing relationship.

There's an amazing level of nonmusical communication between you and your colleagues on stage; you seem to be a father figure, which distinguishes you as Artistic Director... is this making you uncomfortable?
DS: A little bit, because in chamber music that role is shared. Sometimes it's one person, sometimes another or a couple of people simultaneously. In different works the role of leader and protagonist is passed around. The conductor of an orchestra is a dictator; in chamber music the role is that of overseer. As a clarinetist I'm involved in the visceral, actual performance; I'm building. As Artistic Director I'm more of an architect, and once the plans are done they're given to the builder.

Would you share an exquisite moment from your life, or a defining moment?
DS: Watching my son being born was both exquisite and defining. The defining moment of my early life might have been the first time I got up in front of an orchestra; I played Debussy's Rhapsody in Orchestra Hall in Chicago when I was 15.

What sends a chill down your spine?
DS: A lot of things can give me chills: a phrase in a piece of music, a scene in a film. But nothing compares with "Daddy, I love you."

If you have a conception of God, does it involve music in some way?
DS: Yes. It's one of the ways I'm most able to get some kind of transcendental communication with a supreme force or being. I don't think that music is the answer -- everybody's got their own set of communication methods -- but because it's such a big part of my life it's what brings me closest to feeling there's something tying everything together that's greater than any of us.

What do you consider your greatest achievement to this point?
DS: It's still fairly early to say. Keeping my life together while pursuing the career I've mapped out; making things happen to make music; being the best player on the instrument that I can be; bringing a new life into this world.

What would you like to accomplish?
DS: That's much easier: I would like to do my little part to make the world a better place for my son when he's my age and beyond.

What does it mean to you to be an Artist Member of the Chamber Music Society?
DS: Bringing my skills and talent to a loosely united group of musicians who are committed to bringing to life thousands of works is just the most wonderful thing. It actually means as much to me to be an Artist Member as Artistic Director.

If you could have dinner tonight with anyone who ever lived...
DS: I would love to spend an hour or so each with Anton Stadler, the clarinetist whom Mozart wrote for, and Richard Mühlfeld, the one whom Brahms wrote for.