Clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein has performed with many of the best musicians, including pianist Daniel Barenboim and members of the Daedalus String Quartet, which will appear at UNC School of the Arts in January. He received the 2009 Avery Fisher Career Grant, one of classical music's most prestigious honors; this enabled him to invest thousands of dollars in his solo career.
But he is hardly satisfied.
"I want to play on the highest level that I can," he said. "I continue to grow and improve. Teaching is a natural part of that."
Fiterstein is now applying this philosophy at UNCSA, where he joined the faculty earlier this fall. He will make his Watson Hall recital debut on campus Tuesday; the program will include some famous music for solo clarinet and piano (Steven Beck), beginning with Debussy's Premiere Rhapsodie and ending with Brahms' Clarinet Sonata in E-flat Major. Fiterstein and Beck will also team up with Fiterstein's wife, Meira Silverstein, a violinist, to perform Darius Milhaud's Suite.
Some music on the program will be largely unfamiliar: Mieczyslaw Weinberg's Clarinet Sonata and Three Inventions, which Lawrence Dillon, who teaches at UNCSA, wrote for unaccompanied clarinet. The reason: Fiterstein said he has a responsibility to "push certain pieces that you think should be part of the main repertory and just put them on programs even if the presenter says, ‘Who's that? I never heard of them.'"
Fiterstein will also perform off campus. Next month, for example, he and the Vogler Quartet will perform several klezmer-inspired pieces on tour, including Osvaldo Golijov's The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind.
"I feel the need to be in front of an audience and perform," Fiterstein said, adding that he gets edgy if too much time goes by between his performances.
Fiterstein, 31, spent most of his childhood in Upper Nazareth, Israel. He completed his more advanced studies at the Juilliard School in New York.
Before UNCSA hired Fiterstein, he had been living in New York, performing around the world extensively -- and teaching part time. He prefers teaching full time.
"It makes you better to be doing this all the time," he said. "I'm dealing with repertoire that I perform regularly. So I'm just getting deeper into it, basically, and figuring out so many different ways of approaching things."
Fiterstein said he also likes that Winston-Salem is his home base, rather than commuting here to teach, which some UNCSA instructors do. He is living here with Silverstein and their son, Daniel Fiterstein, who is 14 months.
"If I have to travel for performing and to travel for teaching as well, I won't see my family and I won't see my students that much," he said.
Traditionally, clarinetists have had two options for making a decent living: playing in a full-time orchestra or landing a full-time teaching job that allows for performing on the side. But Fiterstein said he will stress to his students that "there are many ways to make it in music and be successful." The key is "creating your own niche in your own individual way."
"Of course, you have to make it work financially also somehow, but I feel like there are more opportunities right now … to find your audience," he said, referring to an environment that allows musicians to produce their own recordings and to put their music on iTunes.
kkeuffel@wsjournal.com
727-7337
Clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein will perform at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in Watson Hall at UNCSA. Tickets are $12, $10 for seniors and students. See www.uncsa.edu/performances, or call 721-1945.
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