by Stephanie Manning
When Amer Hasan introduced himself to the Akron Symphony in 2019, he did so with the opening movement of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto. “ It was the first piece that I played for Maestro Wilkins in my audition, behind the screen,” Hasan recalled in a recent interview. “So the first three minutes of the concerto is not only the first music I associate with auditions, but also with the Akron Symphony.”
Six years on from that fateful performance, which helped earn Hasan the principal clarinet position, he and the orchestra are set to create some new memories with that same Mozart work. Music director Christopher Wilkins will lead Hasan and the Akron Symphony in a performance of the full, three-movement concerto on Saturday, March 29.
The 7:30 pm concert in E.J. Thomas Hall also features Joseph Bologne’s Overture to The Anonymous Lover, Jessie Montgomery’s Five Freedom Songs, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1. Tickets are available online.
“It feels like a full-circle moment,” Hasan said. “It’s really exciting to go to the front of the stage and perform a concerto knowing that I really trust and admire these musicians.”
This isn’t the clarinetist’s first time as a soloist with Akron — in 2021, he performed Adam Shugar’s Hanukkah Overture for String Orchestra and Clarinet as part of the ensemble’s holiday programming. Ever since then, Wilkins had floated the idea of doing something bigger on one of the orchestra’s Classical Series concerts.
“ We had some back-and-forth correspondence about what could be good, and the Mozart Concerto is always a classic choice,” Hasan said. Although he’s played movements of it with different groups, this will be his first time performing the entire work with an orchestra. “It’s been something that I’ve wanted to do.”
Mozart originally wrote the piece for a basset clarinet — a longer, lower-pitched member of the clarinet family, which Hasan enjoys getting to play. But for his Akron performance, he’s opted for the more standard A clarinet, partly because that option feels closer to his heart.
“ It’s the way that I’ve been playing the piece since I was in sixth, seventh grade,” he said. “I feel like I can better reflect the character and the emotions of the piece on an instrument that I’m more comfortable playing.”
Some of his musical interpretation has changed over the years, thanks to his growth as a player and a person, while some has stayed the same. That’s “why I think it’s so personal,” he said. “It’s like you have this friend in the music, and in the composer, too.”
While on tour earlier this month with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, Hasan made a special excursion in Vienna to visit the “Mozart Death House” — the location where the composer spent the last year of his life before he passed in 1791, and where he wrote the Clarinet Concerto. “ It was really meaningful to be able to go there,” the clarinetist said. “In my head I was thinking about the concerto, specifically the very beautiful, operatic second movement, and I got kind of emotional.”
Although the actual house was torn down in 1849, the basement of the building houses an interactive museum. “Funnily enough, it’s in the basement of a department store now,” Hasan said. “At first I thought that was kind of disrespectful — but if you look at all the letters that we have from Mozart, we recognize him as a really funny, goofy guy. So I realized he probably would’ve actually thought this was hilarious.”
A photo machine in the souvenir shop generated a selfie with the great composer, which Hasan took home as a souvenir. And at the Café Mozart, “ I even had a Mozart cake at like eight o’clock in the morning. I think the waiter thought it was kind of funny.”
After the tour ended, Hasan returned to New Haven, Connecticut, where he currently serves as the Morse Post-Graduate Teaching Fellow at the Yale School of Music. Last year, he graduated with his Master of Music from Yale, and before that, he earned his Bachelor of Music from Oberlin Conservatory.
Not only did he win the Akron job while at Oberlin, but during that time he also served as the principal clarinet of the Firelands Symphony Orchestra and was a frequent guest performer with the Cleveland Pops. While it’s been harder to visit the area now that he’s based in New Haven, he remembers his time living here fondly.
“ When I think about Northeast Ohio, it’s always Oberlin and Akron that come to my mind. Those are kind of my musical homes — so they’re very special.”
Photos by Ryan Brandenberg (top) and Amer Hasan
Published on ClevelandClassical.com March 26, 2025.
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