Jörg Widmann (German: [ˈjœʁk ˈviːtman]; born 19 June 1973) is a German composer, conductor, and clarinetist. In 2023, he was the third most performed living composer of contemporary music worldwide. He previously taught clarinet and composition at the University of Music Freiburg. Now, he is a composition professor at the Barenboim–Said Akademie. His most important compositions include the concert overture Con brio, the opera Babylon, the oratorio Arche, Viola Concerto, Friedenskantate, and the trumpet concerto Towards Paradise. He has written musical pieces that honor Classical and Romantic composers. In 2018, he received the Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art. In 2023, he was awarded the Bach Prize by the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. He served as the Gewandhaus composer for the Gewandhaus Orchester Leipzig and as a composer in residence for the Berlin Philharmonic.

Early life and education

Widmann was born on June 19, 1973, in Munich, Germany. His father was a physicist, and his mother was a teacher. His sister is Carolin Widmann, a German classical violinist. He began taking clarinet lessons in 1980. In 1984, he became a composition student of Kay Westermann. Widmann attended Pestalozzi Gymnasium, a secondary school in Munich. Later, he studied composition with Hans Werner Henze, Wilfried Hiller in Munich, and Heiner Goebbels and Wolfgang Rihm in Karlsruhe.

As a clarinetist, he studied at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München with Gerhard Starke from 1986 to 1997, earning a Meisterklassendiplom in 1997. He also studied at the Juilliard School in New York City with Charles Neidich from 1994 to 1995, earning an Advanced Certificate in 1995. He continued his studies at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe from 1997 to 1999.

Career

From 2001 to 2015, Widmann taught clarinet as a professor at the University of Music Freiburg. From 2009 to 2015, he was a part-time professor of composition at the Institute for New Music at the same university, after Mathias Spahlinger. Since 2017, Widmann has held the Edward Said Chair in Composition at the Barenboim–Said Akademie in Berlin.

As a soloist, Widmann has performed with major orchestras in Germany and other countries, including the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, under conductors such as Valery Gergiev, Christoph von Dohnányi, Sylvain Cambreling, and Kent Nagano.

He has played the first performances of several clarinet concertos written for him: in 1999, he performed "Music for Clarinet and Orchestra" by Wolfgang Rihm with "musica viva"; in 2006, he played "Cantus" by Aribert Reimann with the WDR Symphony Orchestra; and in 2015, he performed "über" by Mark Andre at the Donaueschingen Festival.

Widmann’s main clarinet repertoire includes works by Mozart, Weber, Brahms, and Pierre Boulez, such as the Clarinet Concerto and Clarinet Quintet by Mozart, Weber’s Clarinet Concerto No. 1 and Clarinet Quintet, Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet, and Boulez’s "Dialogue de l'ombre double," which he performed in Paris on Boulez’s 85th birthday. His chamber music partners include musicians like Daniel Barenboim, Tabea Zimmermann, András Schiff, Kim Kashkashian, Hélène Grimaud, Denis Kozhukhin, and Mitsuko Uchida.

Widmann mainly uses a Herbert Wurlitzer clarinet he owned during his student years.

Among his chamber music works, Widmann’s early string quartets are notable. His First Quartet was written in 1997, followed by the Chorale Quartet and the Hunting Quartet, which was first performed in 2003 by the Arditti Quartet. In 2005, the Fourth Quartet and "Experiment on a Fugue" (Fifth Quartet with soprano) were premiered by Juliane Banse and the Artemis Quartet. These five one-movement quartets form a complete set.

Widmann’s compositions use a variety of musical styles. For example, he wrote a trilogy for orchestra that explores how vocal forms are used in instrumental ensembles. The trilogy includes "Lied" (premiered in 2003 and recorded by the Bamberg Symphony with Jonathan Nott), "Chor" (premiered in 2004 by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin with Kent Nagano), and "Messe" (premiered in 2005 by the Munich Philharmonic under Christian Thielemann).

Widmann was Composer in Residence at the Salzburg Festival and the chamber music festival Spannungen in Heimbach in 2004. His work "Octet" was first performed on June 4, 2004, at the power plant Kraftwerk Heimbach. In 2007, the Vienna Philharmonic premiered his orchestral piece "Armonica" under Pierre Boulez. In 2008, the Siemens Arts Program sent Widmann to Dubai. That same year, he conducted a rehearsal for the premiere of his concert overture "Con brio."

Widmann composed "Am Anfang," which included a prologue and stage design by Anselm Kiefer. The premiere took place in July 2009 as part of the 20th anniversary of the Opéra Bastille, where Widmann also acted as a clarinetist and made his conducting debut. He was Composer in Residence at the Lucerne Festival in 2009, where Heinz Holliger performed Widmann’s oboe concerto commissioned by the festival. On September 5, Widmann premiered Holliger’s "Rechant" for solo clarinet.

Widmann’s "Free Pieces for Ensemble: Number X" was used in Sophie Fiennes’s documentary "Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow" (2010), which focuses on the German artist Anselm Kiefer. His sister, Carolin Widmann, premiered his violin études IV–VI at the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik in 2010. From 2009 to 2011, Widmann was the Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer Fellow at the Cleveland Orchestra. He performed his "Fantasie for Solo Clarinet" (1993) to celebrate Walter Fink’s 80th birthday at the Rheingau Musik Festival in 2010 and was the festival’s composer and artist in residence in 2014.

In 2012, Widmann collaborated with philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, who wrote the libretto for Widmann’s second opera, "Babylon." Widmann was the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich’s Creative Chair during the 2015–16 season.

The theatrical "Viola Concerto" (2015) marked a new phase in Widmann’s work. The premiere was performed by Antoine Tamestit.

On September 9, 2015, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra announced they would commission a work from Widmann as part of a planned collaboration starting in 2017. The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra also named Widmann its first-ever "Gewandhauskomponist" (Gewandhaus composer) for the 2017–18 season.

From 2017 to 2021, Widmann was Principal Conductor and Artistic Partner of the Irish Chamber Orchestra.

Widmann’s oratorio "ARCHE" premiered on January 13, 2017, during the opening of the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. It was performed by the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra under Kent Nagano. A concert featuring Widmann, Daniel Barenboim, and Anna Prohaska opened the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin on March 4, 2017.

On January 27, 2018, Widmann and the Hagen Quartet performed his "Clarinet Quintet" in Amsterdam as part of a European tour. "Partita," a work commissioned by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, premiered in Leipzig on March 8, 2018, with Andris Nelsons conducting.

After its world premiere at the Bavarian State Opera in 2012, Widmann’s opera "Babylon" was performed in a new version at the Berlin State Opera in 2019 under the direction of Christopher Ward.

String Quartet No. 6, titled "Study on Beethoven" (2019), is dedicated to Anne-Sophie Mutter. This piece began a series of works for the Beethoven anniversary year 2020, which includes five quartets.

Widmann held the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall from 2019 to 2020. During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, he contributed to the online Festival of New Music with his composition "empty space." Barenboim and Emanuel Pahud curated the festival in the empty Pierre Boulez Saal. Another commission from Leipzig and Boston is the lyrical trumpet concerto "Towards Paradise," which premiered on September 23, 2021, in Leipzig with Håkan Hardenberger playing trumpet and Andris Nelson

Reception

According to Bachtrack, in 2023, Widmann was the third most performed living contemporary composer in the world, following John Williams and Arvo Pärt. In 2024, he was ranked sixth.

Style

Widmann’s music cannot be defined as belonging to one specific style or school. His work is known for being varied and imaginative. In his early compositions, which are complex and experimental, Widmann combines serialism and noise with traditional musical forms. He focuses on sounds rather than musical notes. Widmann has written pieces that do not use pitches and others that use familiar musical elements in exaggerated ways. In many of his compositions, he creates a musical connection with composers from the Classical and Romantic periods, such as Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Schubert, and Brahms. He has also written musical pieces that honor these composers.

Widmann’s scores include very detailed and carefully planned instructions. For example, in works like the Viola Concerto, Towards Paradise, and Friedenskantate, the soloist is instructed to move around the stage. He involves the soloist in the creative process of his concertos. He uses unusual playing techniques in many of his compositions, such as in Con brio. In addition to the influence of his musical role models, Widmann draws inspiration from literature, poems, paintings, and sculptures. He often uses texts from books and poems in his compositions. For example, in his oratorio ARCHE, he included works by Matthias Claudius, Klabund, Heinrich Heine, Peter Sloterdijk, Clemens Brentano, and Friedrich Schiller. In his 2023 composition Friedenskantate (Peace Cantata), he used texts by Matthias Claudius, Jean Paul, Bertolt Brecht, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Paul Gerhardt, and the Bible.

Memberships

• 2003: Became a Fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study
• 2005: Joined the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste as a member
• 2007: Became a member of the Freie Akademie der Künste Hamburg
• 2007: Joined the Deutsche Akademie der Darstellenden Künste as a member
• 2016: Became a member of the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz
• 2024: Joined the Royal Swedish Academy of Music as a member

Works

As of 2024, Widmann has created a series of seven musical works called Labyrinth pieces.

• Widmann, Jörg (2019). "Utopian Music? The Exception as the Quintessence." In Beethoven 250. Unter der Oberfläche / Beneath the Surface. Essays zum Beethovenjahr / Essays for the Beethoven Year. Berlin: Pierre Boulez-Saal. Retrieved 29 June 2020.
• —— (14 April 2014). "Musikpreis des 'Heidelberger Frühlings': Man muss das Feuer einfach weitergeben." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (in German). Retrieved 18 April 2021.

Films

• Widmann, Jörg; Kiefer, Anselm; Missler-Morell, Andreas (2009), … und es wird Klang – der Komponist Jörg Widmann (in German), [location not determined]: ZDF, OCLC 916866277
• Faltin, Sigrid; Mutter, Anne-Sophie; SWR Classic (company); SWR Media GmbH (2023), Anne-Sophie Mutter – Vivace (in German), [Germany]: SWR Classic, OCLC 1390093297
• Preuße, Holger (28 May 2023), Im Labyrinth – Der Musiker Jörg Widmann – Die ganze Doku [In the Maze – The Musician Jörg Widmann] (in German), Arte, Aired: 18 June 2023, 23:50. Video English translation available on YouTube. Deutscher Kamerapreis [German Camera Prize] 2023.