We’ve asked clarinetist and guest artist Charles Neidich a few questions about one of the works he’ll be playing, the iconic Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind by Osvaldo Golijov.

Chiarina: Osvaldo Golijov composed Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind in 1994, and it has become a one-of-a-kind addition to the clarinet repertoire. How did you come to know it?

CN: I have always kept my eyes and ears open for new, interesting pieces. When I heard that this composer I didn’t know, Osvaldo Golijov, wrote a work for the Klezmer clarinetist Giora Feidman, I was immediately intrigued. The composer Isachar Miron, who was close to Feidman, organized UJA galas where he played and approached me to take Feidman’s place in shows he was organizing. Feidman, at that time, had already become quite well known and was becoming too busy. Even though I had very little knowledge of Klezmer music, I agreed and Miron coached me on what I would say were Klezmer basics. I played Klezmer music in these shows for about the next three years.

Feidman loved to play bass clarinet and he also played the basset horn and the different members of the regular clarinet family, the Bb, A and the C clarinet. I don’t remember whether it was Feidman’s request or Golijov’s inspiration, but when I heard that in the quintet, the clarinetist was supposed to play 5 instruments, A, Bb, Bass, C, and Basset horn, I was doubly intrigued. Playing the 5 instruments seemed to me to be a rather serious logistical problem, but using all 5 instruments to fit the different colors and sentiments of the different movements was something I had thought never had been done before. I immediately got the music and looked for a way to perform it.

Chiarina: So you will be performing the Golijov with its original instrumentation on five (!) clarinets. What are these different clarinets and how do they change the sound or portrayal of the piece?

CN: The different clarinets give the different movements of the work clearer characters. The bass clarinet, of course, in range and timbre is quite different from the A and Bb clarinets. The A and Bb clarinets are, on the contrary, almost the same, but I do hear a subtle difference between the two; there is a bit more brilliance to the Bb instrument. The C clarinet, however, has a very distinctive sound and is much closer to the folk sound of Klezmer music. In fact, early players of Klezmer and jazz played C clarinets. The 3rd movement has a much more “authentic” and special sound when played with a C clarinet. And the postlude has a much more haunting mood when played on the basset horn, with its very mysterious tonal quality. A quality which, by the way, attracted Mozart to the instrument.

Chiarina: You are known as a master interpreter. How do you combine styles of classical and klezmer playing in a way that sounds authentic? Does the piece’s underlying subject matter—of the rabbi Isaac—play into your interpretation?

CN: This is a difficult question to answer in just a few words and I’m not sure it can be answered in words at all. I am definitely not a scholar of the history of Jewish mystical thought and know very little of the Kabbalah. I did look up Isaac the Blind when I first became interested in the piece, but do not think that the superficial knowledge I gained, while I found it very interesting, has played an important role in my performance of the work. My early experience playing Klezmer music, of course, has helped, but I do not consciously try to draw on it.

When I perform I try to immerse myself in the musical world of the composition, the world of each moment of the performance. This world we cannot explain in words, but it is nevertheless clear to my fellow musicians and to the audience for whom we perform. This is what Mendelssohn meant when he wrote that music is a universal language of emotion more basic than the languages we speak.