Jörg Widmann

Jörg Widmann (born 19 June 1973) is a German composer and clarinetist. He lives and works in Munich and Freiburg.
Widmann was born in Munich and first took clarinet lessons in 1980. A year later he became a composition student of Kay Westermann (born 1958), subsequently also studying with Hans Werner Henze, Wilfried Hiller, Heiner Goebbels and Wolfgang Rihm. As a clarinettist, he graduated from the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München and from the Juilliard School in New York. After graduating with a Master's from Munich in 1997, he furthered his studies at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe. Since 2001 he has taught the clarinet as a Professor at the Freiburg Music College. In January 2008 Widmann signed a contract as a demi-Professor of Composition, succeeding Mathias Spahlingers, at the Institute for New Music at the Freiburg Music College.
Jörg Widmann has achieved success both as a clarinettist and as a composer. As a soloist, he has performed with major orchestras both in Germany and abroad, under such conductors as Christoph von Dohnányi, Sylvain Cambreling and Kent Nagano. Several clarinet concerti have been dedicated to Widmann and premiered by him: in 1999 through "musica viva", he played Music for Clarinets and Orchestra by Wolfgang Rihm, and in 2006 with the WDR Symphony Orchestra, Cantus by Aribert Reimann.

Jörg Widmann's compositions draw on different musical genres. He has composed, for example, a Trilogy for orchestra examining the projection of vocal forms of instrumental ensembles. The Trilogy consists of Lied (premiered in 2003 and recorded on CD by the Bamberg Symphony with Jonathan Nott), Chor (premiered in 2004 by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin with Kent Nagano) and Messe, which was premiered in June 2005 by the Munich Philharmonic under Christian Thielemann. In 2007 Pierre Boulez and the Vienna Philharmonic premiered his orchestral work Armonica.

His string quartets are of particular note among his chamber music works: First String Quartet (1997), followed by Choral Quartet and Hunting Quartet, which was premiered in 2003 with the Arditti Quartet. 2005 saw the first performances of Fourth String Quartet and of Experiment on a Fugue (Fifth String Quartet with soprano), with Juliane Banse and the Artemis Quartet. Together, this series of quartets forms a great cycle.

His études IV-VI for violin (2004–10) were premiered by Carolin Widmann at the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik on 23 April 2010.[2] He performed his Fantasie for clarinet (1993) to celebrate the 80th birthday of Walter Fink at the Rheingau Musik Festival on 16 July 2010.[3]

Widmann's works are published exclusively by Schott Music.