One summer day in 1980, a little boy played basketball alone on a court in Arad. When the ball fell out of his hands and rolled off, he ran after it and found it in the hands of an older man, who smiled at him. "I'm a clarinet teacher at the conservatory," the man said, "and I'll give you the ball back if you come and hear one of my lessons." The boy, Chen Halevi, came to listen and was captivated by the magic of the instrument and the teacher. "I had a lesson every day," he says, "and the teacher, Yitzhak Kazap, who has taught generations of students in Israel, taught me everything there is to know about the instrument."

Today, less than three decades later, Halevi is a world renowned clarinetist: an international virtuoso soloist who plays at major festivals on five continents, an innovator who plays works written especially for him, a senior professor of the clarinet at a university in Germany and a chamber musician who works with leading ensembles and musicians. On Saturday, he can be seen performing together with five musicians from the Tel Aviv Soloists Ensemble in a Classical-Romantic-Modern program featuring works by Mozart, Dvorak and Paul Ben-Haim (Israel Conservatory, Tel Aviv, Saturday, 10.2, 20:30 P.M.).

Whoever attended last season's chamber concert at the Tel Aviv Museum where Olivier Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time" was played, can understand what makes Halevi unique: His rendering made the piece come alive and he succeeded in freezing time with his hushed, hypnotic, almost completely silent tones, and with a musical directness that was closer to human speech than to the sounds of a musical instrument.

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Which academy and which method taught you to play like that?

"I never studied at an academy and that's why I always felt free to develop my own style, without being constrained by methods for playing the clarinet," says Halevi. "It started when I went to a music competition in France, at the age of 20. I heard innovative works by Franco Donatoni, Luciano Berio and others - I couldn't believe such things existed, that the clarinet could issue such sounds. I bought the notes for some of the works and started studying on my own. There was no one in Israel to guide me in this music: I had superb teachers here, Kazap, Richard Lesser, Haim Taub and Mordechai Rechtman, but not for this kind of music. I realized that an entire century separated us in this regard. They were entrenched in the 19th century and I was living in the 21st. There were also no recordings of this music and, of course, no Internet, so I had nothing to hold on to. In Berio's music, for example, there is a bar with a number written above it: 10. I was sure that it had to be played 10 times and that is how I performed it in concerts, and only when a musician heard me playing it abroad, did he come up to me and tell me that the 10 means 10 seconds. I hear recordings of mine from then and laugh. I was naive, I played Berio as if he were a continuation of Romantic music, of Brahms."

His inclination to be an autodidact is what prompted Halevi ten years ago to go to Paris and to try and find his own way there. "I found an apartment for six months. I didn't know French, I didn't have any money and I lived from hand to mouth, playing once a month in a concert that supported me. I went to concerts, but mostly I started to get to know the visual arts and went to museums all the time."

Those six months turned into three years. "I secluded myself and worked with myself. Gradually I discovered that all the great composers of our time live in Paris or come there and so I met many." His reputation started to spread - he worked with composers on their creations, including Berio, Pierre Boulez and Gyorgy Kurtag; then he traveled to the United States and worked there with composer Elliot Carter. Well-known musicians, including the Kronos Quartet, asked to play with him.

Germany vs. Chen Halevi

Halevi happened to hear about the sought-after position of professor of clarinet at the Hochschule (academy of music) in Trossingen, Germany. The position had not been filled for five years because no suitable candidate was found in Germany. The exams were exhausting, he says: "No one had heard of me in Germany, I didn't speak German, I came with a clarinet built using a French system and I needed to give masters classes, teach, lecture and present my pedagogical philosophy to a large panel of judges and finally, give a recital." The result was not long in coming: He got the position.

The scandal was also not long in coming: The university was presented with a petition on behalf of the musicians of the noted Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, signed by 65 senior musicians in Germany, and led by Daniel Barenboim. Musical culture in Germany is in danger, the petition cried out, explaining that the French-style clarinet Halevi played and taught with is threatening to destroy a musical tradition. "Only someone who plays a German clarinet is fit to teach our youth," the petition stated.

Halevi, for his part, informed the university that, "I am willing to halt the whole acceptance process. I don't need all this hassle and a teaching position isn't even necessary."

And what was the university's response?

"Two days later a messenger arrived at my home with the contract."

Is there really no difference between clarinets? After all, this is a very old tradition.

"Today everyone plays on everything. Times have changed, and the differences in playing technique are huge. Students switch from a German to a French clarinet and to an antique 18th century clarinet and perform any repertoire on them. The difference between the methods is anachronistic, and today even the instrument-makers are young and they combine the two worlds."

A premature eulogy

Halevi is working energetically to realize another goal, establishing an association for clarinet music. "I regret that I can't pay composers who compose new, outstanding works for me, and I realized that I had to set up some kind of system that would help me with that," he says. Mostly he wants "to make these works accessible, and not have them just lie around. I want for it to be possible to buy the notes and listen to recordings of them in a world where the major recording companies couldn't care less about them."

Two discs, one of solo pieces and another for clarinet and electronic music, have already been completed and arranged: "I have to decide how to distribute them. This is the problem. Most likely everything will eventually go on the Internet, onto a site that is now being completed. I hope that in another 30 years, the organization will serve every clarinetist and I won't be the only one commissioning works and performing. My hope is that everyone who wants to compose for the clarinet and play, will go through us."

Where has the funding for this project come from until now?

"In the meantime, from my pocket."

The contemporary direction is characterized by a distribution of music and notes on the Internet, innovative works with electronic music and combinations of different kinds of art. "Since the death of classical music was declared, it has only flourished," says Halevi. "As far as the clarinet is concerned, 20 exemplary works in recent years prove its great flourishing, and show that a quiet revolution is underway, really an explosion of classical music.

"What has died are the great ideologies, not the music," he continues. "The large recording companies, the big impresarios, even the old symphony orchestras: many establishments that just milked and exploited classical music. And now there are some who are eulogizing it, but I don't believe them. Those who don't care about the art or the artists, who refuse to innovate, who insist on stagnating with the same repertoire and the same ideologies are the ones to blame. The music is alive."