Originally published in The Clarinet 52/1 (December 2024).

Copies of The Clarinet are available for ICA members.

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Interview with Sharon Kam

Internationally renowned clarinet soloist and recording artist Sharon Kam recently spoke with Heike Fricke; their conversation is published both here and in the December issue of the German-language publication ‘rohrblatt.

by Heike Fricke

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Internationally renowned clarinet soloist Sharon Kam enthusiastically played the recorder as a child and then had her first clarinet lessons in Israel with Eli Eban. After studying at The Juilliard School of Music in New York City, she won the 1992 ARD International Music Competition in Munich. As a soloist, she works with orchestras in the US, Europe, and Japan. Her chamber music partners include Christian Tetzlaff (violin), Enrico Pace (piano), Julian Steckel (cello), Leif Ove Andsnes (piano), Antje Weithaas (violin), Liza Ferschtman (violin), Christian Poltera (cello), and the Jerusalem Quartet. Her extensive discography includes the clarinet works of Béla Bartók, Leonard Bernstein, Johannes Brahms, Aaron Copland, Claude Debussy, Jean Françaix, Paul Hindemith, Franz Krommer, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Francis Poulenc, Gioacchino Rossini, Artie Shaw, Robert Schumann, Louis Spohr, and Carl Maria von Weber. She recorded Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto (KV 622) and Clarinet Quintet (KV 581) on a basset clarinet. Kam premiered concertos by Krzysztof Penderecki, Herbert Willi, Iván Eröd, and Peter Ruzicka. Her album 1811, featuring concertos by Weber, Kurpiński, and Crusell with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, was released by Orfeo International in 2020. Since 2022 Kam has been professor of clarinet at the Hochschule für Musik in Hanover, Germany. We had an engaging and lively conversation over Zoom in September 2024.

HEIKE FRICKE: You made your debut quite early, Ms. Kam: Mozart’s Concerto under Zubin Mehta at the age of 16.

SHARON KAM: When I was 15, I was allowed to perform the first movement of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, and at 16, the entire concerto. That was with the Israel Philharmonic, and it was wonderful! I performed the Quintet shortly before my 18th birthday with the Guarneri Quartet in Carnegie Hall in New York.

HF: Dreamlike!

SK: Everything I played as a teenager was intended to nurture me. The older colleagues supported me: “We’re happy to do this with you,” they said, and I benefited immensely from that. At Juilliard, I studied with David Shifrin for a year. When he moved to Yale, I had to choose: follow him to Yale or stay with Charles Neidich at Juilliard—and I chose to stay.

HF: How did Charles Neidich’s interest in historical instruments influence you and your interpretation?

SK: Charles Neidich always played the Mozart Concerto on a basset clarinet. It took me a long time to find a basset clarinet that I truly liked. With the basset clarinet, you have to rethink Mozart’s music because the instrument simply doesn’t sound as good in certain registers. You gain the low register but must be careful that certain notes, which might be important for the phrase, aren’t emphasized anymore. In the early music scene, people know the disadvantages of historical instruments, and a good artist hides these disadvantages so skillfully that the audience doesn’t notice. That was the case with the basset clarinet as well.

Neidich was one of the first clarinetists to bring improvised cadenzas and ornamentation into classical concerts. He was like a walking Wikipedia of the clarinet, possessing copies of first editions and manuscripts he found in libraries and archives. He always urged us to critically engage with the sheet music and search for our own truth. That made me rethink things.

HF: You received the ECHO Klassik award twice as “Instrumentalist of the Year”: in 1998 for your Weber recording with the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig under Kurt Masur, and in 2006 for your CD with the MDR Symphony Orchestra featuring works by Spohr, Weber, Rossini, and Mendelssohn. You recorded Weber’s second clarinet concerto again 20 years later—what motivated you to do that?

SK: I decided to record the second concerto again because my interpretation had evolved significantly since my first recording with the Gewandhaus Orchestra, where I had only played it for the second time ever, for the recording! I had only played it once in concert and then went straight to the recording… and I wasn’t entirely satisfied with my interpretation. At that time, I was still inexperienced with the piece and didn’t have a more defined opinion about it. The CD 1811 also includes clarinet concertos by Kurpiński and Crusell. Kurpiński’s piece is as well-known in Poland as Weber’s Concertino is here [in Germany], but it’s hardly known elsewhere because there’s no recording of it. So, I promised my Polish clarinet friends that I would record it.

HF: What new insights did you bring to the Weber?

SK: I think the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig had a Weber tradition that was never questioned because Weber had significant connections to the city through his professional activities, publishing contacts, and personal relationships. But the clarinet Weber is 10 years younger than the Freischütz Weber, who in turn is ten years younger than Wagner. And in Germany, Weber is viewed through a Wagnerian lens. But when you look at Weber’s manuscripts, they often sound more like Rossini—light and transparent. When we used the leaner version of a new edition, it didn’t sound interesting and didn’t feel like Weber anymore. That’s when I realized how much our sheet music editions influence us: you had to recreate what was missing and add a bit of what we associate with Weber today, a bit more Romanticism. This led me to explore the Baermann edition, which was created 10 years after Weber’s death. Heinrich Baermann’s son [Carl] published his version 59 years after the premiere and was only two years old when the piece premiered. This means he wasn’t a musician during the Weber concerto era and viewed the work through Romantic eyes. You can’t fully adopt Carl Baermann’s interpretation of Weber’s concerto, but it doesn’t seem right to ignore it either, since he’s a contemporary witness. The problem is that unless you are Heinrich Baermann himself, you can’t know what he meant, as Weber didn’t write down enough.

Weber wasn’t consistent with his dynamics and other details. The first manuscript differs from the corrected one, with different notes and fermatas, which makes our lives a bit difficult. It’s a challenge to decide between various sources and traditions what Weber might have meant.

We have the freedom to view the concertos solely from the perspective of late German Romanticism, which was somewhat the approach of the recording with the Gewandhaus Orchestra—lots of bass, lots of weight. Wonderful! But today, that doesn’t feel contemporary to me anymore. So, I said: “I’d love to record Weber’s second concerto again today.”

HF: Your CD American Classics also caused a stir, winning the prestigious German Record Critics’ Award in 1998. What made that recording special?

SK: That’s an award I’m very proud of because it’s a content-based honor, and it means a lot to every artist. I had a lot of fun recording the Copland concerto, which I find full of humor and unexpected twists. It’s not classical entertainment music; it’s about the interaction between soloist and orchestra. There’s so much drive, emotion, and a “wow” factor in it. If you take it too seriously, you miss out. There’s a certain lightness and cheerfulness that make this concerto so charming to me.

The concerto is dedicated to Benny Goodman, and he took it very seriously. He didn’t record it until nine years after it was written—right before the exclusive performance rights expired.

HF: Speaking of Benny Goodman, you recorded a chamber music CD, Contrasts, with your brother, violist Ori Kam, and pianist Matan Porat. It includes Mozart’s Kegelstatt Trio, Schumann’s Märchenerzählungen, Brahms’s songs, Jazzical by Ilian Rechtman, and Bartók’s Contrasts, also dedicated to Goodman. Does it matter that you’re making music with your brother here?

SK: We developed this program together over two years. We love playing in this ensemble, but we were still looking for the right final piece for a concert program. The challenge with compositions for clarinet and viola is that we’re both mid-range instruments, meaning we revolve around the same tonal area, unlike violin and cello, which play in very different ranges. Viola and clarinet always interact within the same tonal space.

Additionally, many composers associate contemplative and gentle moods with this instrumentation. That’s when my brother suggested Bartók’s Contrasts as a challenging solution, and he really managed to transfer that material—which violinists already find intimidating—directly to the viola. “I almost have to stack my fingers on top of each other because it’s so tight,” he said. But now the program has a real contrast for our instruments. And some of the most beautiful repertoire for viola includes Brahms’s songs Ge­stillte Sehnsucht and Geistliches Wiegenlied, but Ori rarely gets the opportunity to perform them with a singer. That’s why my brother asked if I could play them on the clarinet instead. And now we can always play them!

With these arrangements, the program became colorful, a program we played with great joy, and recording it wasn’t a problem—it took just a few days.

HF: Your most recent CD focuses on Hindemith. What fascinates you about him?

SK: Hindemith’s musical language is absolutely logical to me. I love the way he builds phrases, how he creates so much expression in a small format. Even though Hindemith is often perceived as “difficult,” I find his music fantastic. I grew up with Hindemith’s Viola Sonata Op. 11 No. 4—it’s an incredible sonata! Hindemith has always been a part of my repertoire. I still have the sheet music where my mother translated for me what mäßig bewegt (moderately moving) meant. I didn’t know back then. I didn’t speak any German, and it wasn’t written in Italian, but in this strange German with letters I didn’t recognize. This clarinet concerto uses an 11/8 time signature in the third movement marked ruhig bewegt (calmly moving). It’s amazing how the movement develops—it’s truly the work of a mastermind. And the themes are so bright and beautiful! Hindemith’s music feels like a native language to me, one that I intuitively understand.

With this concerto, Hindemith joined composers like Morton Gould, Igor Stravinsky, and Francis Poulenc, who wrote for Benny Goodman.

HF: Hindemith was active in Berlin in the 1920s, not only at the Hochschule (university), but also at the music school. This leads us to your teaching position at the Hochschule in Hanover, where you’ve been teaching since October 2022. What advice do you want to give your students?

SK: I try to encourage them to find themselves and then stay true to who they are. That may sound simple, but it’s incredibly important in today’s world. If we turn on the radio and hear an unfamiliar pop song, we often know right away who the artist is because their style and voice are recognizable—that’s something only a small group of artists achieve, like Taylor Swift, Pink, or Lady Gaga. That kind of distinctiveness is crucial and unfortunately has become rarer.

In the past, people were allowed to be who they were. Today, everyone has the same clarinets, the same reeds, the same mouthpieces, and they all sound the same. We’ve already heard everything on YouTube, the tempos are the same, and the ornamentations are all identical. Personally, I find it worrying when this kind of imitation happens because interpretation should always be something personal and unique.

I want to encourage my students to listen to themselves and ask, “Why am I doing it this way?” and “How can I find my own sound?” It’s really important to me that they find their own musical path and don’t just imitate. I want to help shape their personal edges and quirks, not smooth them out, but refine them and make them better. Moreover, it’s essential to understand why you want to be a musician. I’m a musician because I have to be. That’s who I am, and that’s something I have to pass on.

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