Jörg Widmann

Jörg Widmann is equally well known as a clarinetist and composer. He is also active as a conductor and is a significant educator.

Widmann was born on June 19, 1973, in Munich. He took up the clarinet in 1980 but showed a talent for composition as well and began lessons in that field with Kay Westermann. He entered the Hochschule für Musik in Munich as a clarinetist in 1986. In the mid-'90s, Widmann commuted between the U.S. and Germany, studying clarinet with <a href="spotify:artist:3lDahJNf7d4adku8fQj7pj">Charles Neidich</a> at the Juilliard School in New York and composition in Munich with <a href="spotify:artist:7xkiLJgEoKMVDgTh0s2Mqu">Hans Werner Henze</a> and Wilfried Hiller. He went on for further composition studies with <a href="spotify:artist:2aFZVrBUQflQVLEuEGLxcY">Heiner Goebbels</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:1LqZaxmZNvkNyC5FaICGkW">Wolfgang Rihm</a> in Karlsruhe, Germany. Widmann began teaching clarinet at the Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg in 2001 and added composition courses to his duties in 2009.

Meanwhile, a series of prizes added to his renown as a composer: among other honors, his opera Das Gesicht im Spiegel was selected as the most important world premiere of the 2003-2004 season by Opernwelt magazine, and in 2006, he received the Claudio Abbado Composition Award from the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra Academy. He has been composer-in-residence with increasingly prestigious institutions, including the Lucerne Festival in 2009, the Rheingau Music Festival in 2014, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra from 2017 to 2018, and in 2019-2020, holding the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer's Chair at Carnegie Hall. He also held a composer residency with the <a href="spotify:artist:6uRJnvQ3f8whVnmeoecv5Z">Berlin Philharmonic</a>. In 2020, he contributed the work empty space to the online Festival of New Music during the Covid pandemic; the work was tailored for the empty Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin.

Widmann's compositions fall into a wide variety of idioms, from purely tonal to pitchless. According to a Bachtrack ranking in 2018, he was the world's third-most-often-performed composer, after only <a href="spotify:artist:2P6ygesd9xg5DPOBnda2jg">Arvo Pärt</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:3dRfiJ2650SZu6GbydcHNb">John Williams</a>. As a clarinetist, Widmann has performed both contemporary music and traditional repertory; he has collaborated on new works with such composers as <a href="spotify:artist:1LqZaxmZNvkNyC5FaICGkW">Rihm</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:2tFIElBQr2cl7crv8T30ZI">Aribert Reimann</a>, and <a href="spotify:artist:1td0Lqu4V2wiTnvmrHzDkW">Heinz Holliger</a>. Widmann has also toured with the <a href="spotify:artist:4301XXSbiO4YrZZcuyktbB">Hagen Quartet</a>, and in 2017, he became the principal conductor of the <a href="spotify:artist:5BEsC9s9MiyK1GKlef4TMN">Irish Chamber Orchestra</a>. More than 60 of Widmann's compositions have been recorded, prominent among them his four string quartets. He has also made more than 20 recordings as a solo clarinetist, again covering both contemporary and traditional repertory, for such labels as <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Orfeo%22">Orfeo</a>, <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Harmonia+Mundi%22">Harmonia Mundi</a>, and <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Wergo%22">Wergo</a>. In 2020, he moved to <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22ECM%22">ECM</a> for a recording of Brahms' clarinet sonatas with pianist <a href="spotify:artist:24K6LTZFqBAvKsorwK0iXd">András Schiff</a>, an album that also included Widmann's own Five Intermezzi for piano. In 2024, he returned on the <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Myrios+Classics%22">Myrios Classics</a> label with an album on which he was featured as both performer (of <a href="spotify:artist:4NJhFmfw43RLBLjQvxDuRS">Mozart</a>'s Clarinet Quintet in A major, K. 581) and composer (of his own Clarinet Quintet). He holds the Edward Said Chair in Composition at the Barenboim-Said Akademie in Berlin. ~ James Manheim, Rovi