Clarinet concerto screams one minute, whispers the next.

Byline: Fred Crafts The Register-Guard

The first time world renown American clarinetist David Shifrin played Carl Nielsen's devilish Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra, Op. 57, he was in high school.

"I think I drove everyone out of the house practicing that piece," Shifrin recalls by phone from his office in New Haven, Conn., where he is a professor of music at Yale University.

"For me, it was a defining moment," he recalls. "I took the summer off between the junior and senior years of high school and did only two things: I learned how to drive, and I learned the Nielsen Clarinet Concerto."

For him, the days sped by.

``Driver's ed was about an hour every day and the Nielsen Clarinet Concerto was six or seven hours every day. I'm sure I did other things, but in my mind that's all I did in the summer of 1966,'' Shifrin says. ``I've so far survived both of them.''

More than that, Shifrin returned that fall to Interlochen High School in Michigan, where he played the piece with the school orchestra, then won a competition to play it with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

He's not sure how many times he has performed it. But he figures by the time he plays it with the Eugene Symphony on Thursday, it will have been five years since he last performed it.

Syracuse (N.Y.) Symphony music director Daniel Hege will conduct the orchestra, which will also perform Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 9 and the overture to W.A. Mozart's ``Marriage of Figaro.''

Shifrin, one of only two wind players to have been awarded the Avery Fisher Prize, unhesitatingly calls Nielsen's unusual clarinet concerto "a masterpiece" and notes that "there's nothing else like it in the repertoire."

The Danish composer finished the piece in 1928. Reportedly it was inspired by, and modeled after, his friend and colleague, clarinetist Aage Oxenvad. They had played together in the opera orchestra, and Nielsen later composed a work for the Copenhagen Wind Quintet, of which Oxenvad was a member. He intended to compose a piece featuring each instrument but died in 1931 after completing only concertos for flute and clarinet.

But what a clarinet concerto it was. Lyrical and quirky, it ranks with Mozart's Clarinet Concerto as the best in the repertoire.

If Nielsen was truly trying to capture Oxenvad's personality in music, then the Oxenvad that comes down through time was a volatile man, subject to moments of deep introspection, followed by violent outbursts.

"It's great as a performer to have this role that extends from really, really aggressive, tremendously energetic, and virtuosic playing to very, very serene, beautiful exquisite melodies," Shifrin says.

Though written in five sections, the concerto moves along seamlessly to spin a 30-minute adventure, divided by two large and demanding cadenzas that explore a wide emotional range and demand technical facility.

Because of that, Shifrin sees the work as a watershed event in his development as a player.

"It felt like taking on this challenge made a real difference in my development as a clarinetist, and I see that happening with a number of my students over the years," says Shifrin, who has been the artistic director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center for 12 years and the artistic director of Chamber Music Northwest (in Portland) for 24 years.

The concerto begins deceptively, with a simple melody that rises from the lower strings through the upper strings to the clarinet.

"It's almost like a little children's song," Shifrin says. "Then it gradually unravels and becomes rather angry."

The clarinetist has an unusual partner throughout the piece - a snare drum, which seems to argue and irritate the soloist, spurring the clarinet "to all kinds of dramatic and virtuosic feats."

Even as the clarinet plays a serene and elegant melody, Shifrin notes that "suddenly there'll be some kind of stimulus, and the clarinetist just goes wild - almost screaming."

"It's not improvised - sometimes it sounds like it is - it's just all over the place," Shifrin goes on. "It made demands on the clarinet soloist that had never been made before. It really became the model for what could be done on the instrument up to that time."

With the passage of years - he is 54 - the work has changed for Shifrin.

"When I was younger, I looked at it mostly for its technical challenges as a clarinetist," he says. "But the older I get, the more I look at it as a challenge to make it musically dramatic."

After all the tumult and the shouting, the piece dies down at the end and closes peacefully, with the violins up high and the clarinet down

low. Shifrin likes that - now.

"When I first started to learn this piece, it seemed like a big disappointment that it didn't end with a big flourish. But the more I play it, the more I'm touched by this very quiet resolution to the emotional journey that this piece is," he says.

"It's taxing, but it's worth all the effort to play it and to listen to it."

Fred Crafts can be reached at 338-2575 or fcrafts@guardnet .com.

CONCERT PREVIEW

Nielsen and Schubert

What: Guest conductor Daniel Hege leads the Eugene Symphony Orchestra in Carl Nielsen's Clarinet Concerto (David Shifrin, soloist) and Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 9

When: 8 p.m. Thursday

Where: Hult Center, Seventh Avenue and Willamette Street

How much: $15-$36, through the Hult Center box office (682-5000)

Lecture: Hege and Shifrin discuss the concert at noon Wednesday, Hult Center's Studio One, free

Master class: Shifrin will instruct UO School of Music wind players, 1 p.m. Thursday, Beall Hall, 961 E. 18th Ave.; public may observe, free

CAPTION(S):

David Shifrin, a clarinetist who teaches at Yale University, will play with the Eugene Symphony Orchestra this week.