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 Charles Neidich at the Juilliard School in New York and composition in Munich with Hans Werner Henze and Wilfried Hiller. He went on for further composition studies with Heiner Goebbels and Wolfgang Rihm 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 Berlin Philharmonic. 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 Arvo Pärt and John Williams. As a clarinetist, Widmann has performed both contemporary music and traditional repertory; he has collaborated on new works with such composers as Rihm, Aribert Reimann, and Heinz Holliger. Widmann has also toured with the Hagen Quartet, and in 2017, he became the principal conductor of the Irish Chamber Orchestra. 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 Orfeo, Harmonia Mundi, and Wergo. In 2020, he moved to ECM for a recording of Brahms' clarinet sonatas with pianist András Schiff, an album that also included Widmann's own Five Intermezzi for piano. In 2024, he returned on the Myrios Classics label with an album on which he was featured as both performer (of Mozart'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 /TiVo
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Enigma
Sarah Aristidou, Daniel Arkadij Gerzenberg, Jörg Widmann
Klassiek - Released by Alpha Classics on 27 okt. 2023
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Metamorphosis
Sergei Nakariakov, Jörg Widmann, Irish Chamber Orchestra
Klassiek - Released by Luiza Records on 21 jul. 2023
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Johannes Brahms: Clarinet Sonatas
Klassiek - Released by ECM New Series on 2 okt. 2020
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Mozart & Widmann: Clarinet Quintets
Klassiek - Released by Myrios Classics on 17 mrt. 2023
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Widmann, Strauss & Beethoven: Con brio
Jörg Widmann, Irish Chamber Orchestra
Klassiek - Released by Alpha Classics on 17 sep. 2021
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Weber: Clarinet Quintet, Concertino for Clarinet, Grand Duo Concertant & Der Freischütz Overture
Jörg Widmann, Irish Chamber Orchestra, Denis Kozhukhin
Klassiek - Released by Alpha Classics on 28 aug. 2020
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Mozart: Clarinet Concerto - Weber: Clarinet Concerto No.1...
Jörg Widmann, Berlin Deutsches Symphony Orchestra, Peter Ruzicka
Klassiek - Released by Orfeo on 11 mrt. 2016
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Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 5 in D Major, Op. 107, MWV N 15 "Reformation"
Irish Chamber Orchestra, Mojca Erdmann, Jörg Widmann, Unknown Artist
Klassiek - Released by Orfeo on 12 mei 2017
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Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 3 in A Minor "Scottish" & The Hebrides - Jörg Widmann: 180 Beats per Minute & Fantasie
Irish Chamber Orchestra, Jörg Widmann
Klassiek - Released by Orfeo on 20 apr. 2018
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Once Upon a Time… Fairy Tales by Robert Schumann & Jörg Widmann
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Klassiek - Released by Myrios Classics on 8 dec. 2017
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Messiaen: Quatuor pour la fin du temps, I/22 (Live)
Jörg Widmann, Carolin Widmann, Nicolas Altstaedt, Alexander Lonquich
Kamermuziek - Released by Orfeo on 22 okt. 2012
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introspective | retrospective
Klassiek - Released by Myrios Classics on 20 feb. 2012
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BEETHOVEN, L. van: Clarinet Trio / BRAHMS, J.: Clarinet Trio / WIDMANN, J.: Nachtstuck (Widmann, Vogler, Kupiec)
Klassiek - Released by Berlin Classics on 1 jan. 2002
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Elegie
Jörg Widmann, Heinz Holliger, German Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Christoph Poppen
Klassiek - Released by ECM New Series on 18 mrt. 2011
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Jörg Widmann: Drittes Labyrinth | Polyphone Schatten
Sarah Wegener, Christophe Desjardins, Jörg Widmann
Klassiek - Released by wergo on 3 aug. 2018
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Wolfgang Rihm : Über die Linie II - Coll'Arco (Rihm Edition, Vol. 6)
Jörg Widmann, Carolin Widmann, WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, Sylvain Cambreling, Eivind Gullberg Jensen
Klassiek - Released by SWR Classic on 6 mrt. 2012
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Johannes Brahms: Clarinet Sonatas
Klassiek - Released by ECM New Series on 2 okt. 2020
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Schumann : Es war einmal… (Märchenerzählungen)
Trio´s - Released by Myrios Classics on 17 nov. 2017
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Widmann: Works for Ensemble
Zurich Collegium Novum, Olga Pasichnyk, Jörg Widmann
Kamermuziek - Released by NEOS Music on 29 jun. 2010
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Works for Ensemble
Jörg Widmann, Collegium Novum Zürich, Olga Pasichnyk
Klassiek - Released by Neos on 27 nov. 2007
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Genzmer: Kammermusik
Jörg Widmann, Oliver Triendl, David Adorjan
Symfonische muziek - Released by Thorofon Records on 1 jan. 2000
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