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There’s an unusual beauty to Burt Hara’s clarinet playing. He’s so expressive he seems to levitate, as if he’s charming himself out of his seat (“It’s probably just nervous energy,” says the self-effacing virtuoso). Twelve years ago, the seventeen-season Minnesota Orchestra veteran did leave his chair temporarily while on a quest for the Holy Grail of wind-player gigs—a principal position with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

The chair opened up when Anthony Gigliotti, who’d held that position for forty-seven years, retired. Despite personal matters, Hara jumped at the chance.

In a field where a musician might as well check the obituaries as the want ads for a plum job, Hara realized it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. “I decided I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t take the audition.”

He left town secretly hoping he would be the runner-up and could return home and get on with his life. When he was one of two finalists, he considered packing up his clarinet and leaving. Instead, he played the final round and won the job.

Hara showed up for work several weeks later, just in time for the orchestra’s nine-week strike. “It was a contentious, ugly battle,” he says. “I realized this may be the greatest job in the world, but it’s just a job.” After the situation stabilized, his playing quickly earned the respect of his colleagues and conductor—and glowing reviews. “But I thought I was playing terribly,” he says. “I looked at myself in the mirror and said, ‘If you think you’re playing terribly and all these people think you’re playing great, and you miss being a dad, why are you doing this?’ I quit the next day.”

This fall, in a concert that includes symphonies by Ives and Dvorak, Hara is in the spotlight, playing the subscription premiere of Aaron Copland’s Clarinet Concerto. The piece is rarely performed because it’s devilishly difficult for the strings. Written for Benny Goodman in 1948, the work is played without a pause—the lyrical first movement is connected to the dancelike second movement with a rhythmic, jazzy cadenza for the soloist. “Goodman’s music could really dance, and you have to bring that character to it when you play it,” says Hara. “This concerto has some of my favorite solo writing.

“As a clarinetist, I’m very lucky to have the finest mature works by a lot of composers. We tend to kill them off. Mozart wrote a concerto for clarinet, then died. Brahms and Poulenc wrote clarinet sonatas, then died.” Happily, this concerto didn’t kill Copland—he lived forty years after its premiere, though it was one of his last mature works.

Philadelphia. He was happy to have been a part of its orchestra’s tradition, but he felt empty there. “I felt like I could be a musician and a father here,” he says. “I’m enjoying what I’m doing. Some prefer to solo all the time, but often the most gratifying repertoire is in the orchestra. But soloing with an orchestra this great is something I never take for granted.”

Oct. 5–6. Orchestra Hall, 1111 Nicollet Mall, Mpls., 612-371-5656