Contact:
Carl Herko
Vice President, Media & Public Relations
503-416-6347
cherko@orsymphony.org
March 13, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(PORTLAND, Ore.) — Israeli clarinet virtuoso Sharon Kam makes her Oregon Symphony debut Apr. 12-14 in a performance of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto, the composer’s last instrumental work and a masterpiece critics have called “the foremost clarinet concerto in the world.”
Right off the bat the Mozart concerto will be instantly recognizable to music lovers for its gorgeous and haunting opening melody. It is a work that, as one critic has written, “gives many listeners the irresistible impression that moments of unusually intense beauty carry with them an inevitable feeling of sadness, as of something too perfect to last.”
Music Director Carlos Kalmar will lead the Oregon Symphony in three performances, scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Apr. 12 and 13, and 8 p.m. Monday, Apr. 14, in the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.
The concert will also be presented at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Apr. 15, at Willamette University’s Smith Auditorium in Salem.
Mozart also plays a major role in another work on the program, the orchestral suite from the Richard Strauss opera Der Rosenkavalier. Obviously Mozart didn’t compose it – Strauss did – but the best-known and most-frequently performed of Strauss’ operas was in fact written in homage to Mozart in 1911 when, after completing his unmistakably modernist Salome and Elektra, Strauss famously announced, “I shall now write a Mozart opera.” (Critics scoffed, but the public was instantly smitten.)
The concert opens with a more challenging work, the 1936 Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta of Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. Considered one of Bartok’s pivotal creations, it is perhaps best-known today for its eerily beautiful, yet chillingly unapproachable, third movement – parts of which were used in 1980 in the score for Stanley Kubrick’s classic horror flick The Shining.
Tickets are available for $15 to $93 at the Oregon Symphony Ticket Office, 923 SW Washington St., in downtown Portland. Ticket office hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. Tickets may also be purchased by phone at (503) 228-1353 or (800) 228-7343 during the same hours, or online at any time from the orchestra’s web site, www.orsymphony.org.
Tickets are also available through ticketmaster.com or by calling (503) 790-ARTS. Discounted tickets for groups of 10 or more are available through the symphony’s group sales hotline, (503) 416-6380. Student rush tickets are also available for $10.
The concert is sponsored by Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt, with additional support from Lufthansa. Media partners are The Oregonian, KINK-FM and KBPS All Classical Radio.