Clarinetist in Mozart concerto

Shields has been performing in the Canadian Opera Company’s orchestra in a production of Mozart’s “La Clemenza di Tito.” In a March 3 concert at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, he will be soloing with the New Mexico Philharmonic in Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A major.

Shields, the principal clarinetist for both orchestras, said he’s been playing a clarinet with a specially made extension – a basset clarinet in the key of F – in one of two operatic arias and a standard clarinet in the other.

	If you go WHAT: New Mexico Philharmonic with soloist James Shields and guest conductor Philip Mann WHEN: 2 p.m. March 3 WHERE: National Hispanic Cultural Center, 1701 Fourth SW HOW MUCH: $24, $35, $46 and $68 in advance at the NHCC box office, by calling 323-4343 or 724-4771 or by visiting www.nmphil.org or at the door

“There are two seven-minute arias where the clarinet parts are as prominent as the singer’s,” he said in a phone interview from Toronto.

In Albuquerque, Shields will play a basset clarinet in the key of A, which he borrowed from a friend.

The philharmonic concert happens to be the second time he’s soloing in Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto. The last time was with the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra.

Shields calls his solo work in the concerto and in the opera “a rare privilege” because Mozart wrote the solos for clarinetist-friend Anton Stadler.

“It’s like I’m able to really experience Stadler’s world more deeply. … With all this music I’m in a personal relationship with Mozart and Stadler,” he said.

Shields said Mozart composed the opera and the concerto back-to-back.

On the same program with the concerto are the overture to Gioacchino Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville” and Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 in C major (“The Great”).

The symphony, said guest conductor Philip Mann, is one of the greatest achievements of any composer in the Western classical tradition.

“The C major symphony is arguably Schubert’s finest work,” said Mann, music director of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra. “It has a scale and scope that is greater than any of his other symphonic repertoire. Yet at the same time there’s this intimacy and connection with a sublime melody that holds it all together.”

With his background as an opera conductor, Mann said he brings a little different perspective to the “incredible humor and tongue-in-cheek inside jokes in the Rossini overture, which is small yet grand and vast.”

Mann, a violinist, said he has had a long connection to New Mexico and southern Colorado. He lived in Farmington and then was reared in Durango, Colo. His stepfather Jan Carl Roshong was the founder of Durango’s San Juan Symphony, and over the years Robertson & Sons Violin Shop in Albuquerque has worked on his violins.