Whoever encounters the music of Jörg Widmann for the first time is astonished at its directness and intensity. Not infrequently, the music breaks like a raging torrent over the listener: it is excessive in its effervescent virtuosity or its infinite sadness. (Markus Fein)

Jörg Widmann was born on 19 June 1973 in Munich. He studied the clarinet at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich with Gerd Starke and later with Charles Neidich at the Juilliard School in New York (1994-1995). He additionally began composition lessons with Kay Westermann at the age of eleven and subsequently continued his studies with Wilfried Hiller and Hans Werner Henze (1994-1996) and later Heiner Goebbels and Wolfgang Rihm in Karlsruhe (1997-1999). Widmann’s great passion as a clarinettist is chamber music and he regularly performs with partners such as Tabea Zimmermann, Heinz Holliger, András Schiff, Kim Kashkashian und Hélène Grimaud. He has also achieved great success as a soloist in orchestral concerts in Germany and abroad. Several works have been dedicated to Widmann by fellow composers: in 1999, he performed the premiere of “Music for Clarinet and Orchestra” by Wolfgang Rihm in the musica viva concert series; in 2006, he performed Cantus by Aribert Reimann with the WDR symphony orchestra. In 2001, Jörg Widmann was appointed as the successor of Dieter Klöcker as professor for clarinet at the Freiburg Staatliche Hochschule für Musik and in 2009 also took on a professorship for composition at the same institution.

It is the string quartets which form the core of Widmann’s oeuvre: the String Quartet No. I (1997), followed by the Choralquartett (2003/2006) and the Jagdquartett which was premiered by the Arditti Quartet in 2003. This series was complemented in 2005 with the String Quartet IV (first performance given by the Vogler Quartet) and the Versuch über die Fuge, [Attempt at a Fugue] Quartet No.V with soprano (premiered by Juliane Banse and the Artemis Quartet). The five string quartets are intended as a cycle in which each individual work pursues a traditional movement form and the appropriate performance techniques.

Widmann has composed a trilogy of works for large orchestra on the transformation of vocal forms for instrumental forces consisting of the compositions Lied (2003/2007), Chor (2004) and Messe (2005). In 2007, Christian Tetzlaff and the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie gave the premiere of Widmann’s first Violin Concerto. The same year, Pierre Boulez and the Vienna Philharmonic gave the first performance of Armonica for orchestra: Widmann combines the heavenly tonal colours of a glass harmonica above the orchestra to produce a homogenously breathing body of sounds and sound effects. In Antiphon, conducted in the first performance by Paavo Järvi in 2008, the instruments operate within a radical cutting technique: the instrumental groups are divided into mini-choirs according to the models of Venetian polychoral music. This was followed by Con brio, a homage to Beethoven, performed for the first time by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Mariss Jansons.

Two music theatre projects distinguish Widmann as an outstanding composer for the stage: the opera Das Gesicht im Spiegel was selected by the German periodical Opernwelt as the most significant first performance of the season 2003/04. In 2009, the composer contributed the music for Anselm Kiefer’s stage project on apocalyptic texts on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Opéra Bastille in Paris with his work Am Anfang.

Jörg Widmann has received numerous prizes for his compositions: the Belmont Prize for contemporary music from the Forberg-Schneider Foundation (1998), the Schneider-Schott Music Prize, the Paul Hindemith Prize (both in 2002), the encouragement prize from the Ernst von Siemens music foundation, the achievement prize from the Munich Opera Festival (both in 2003) and the prizes from the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna and from the Deutsche Symphonie Orchester Berlin (both in 2004). In 2006, Widmann received the composition prize from the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg and the Claudio Abbado Composition Prize from the Orchestra Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic. He is a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin and a full member of the Bavarian Academy of the Fine Arts, the Free Academy of the Arts in Hamburg and the German Academy of the Dramatic Arts. He has already worked as Composer in Residence for the Deutsche Sinfonie-Orchester Berlin, the North German Radio Symphony Orchestra (“das neue werk”), the Salzburg Festival and the German Radio Philharmonic Orchestra Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern.