From 2001 to 2015, Widmann taught clarinet as a professor at the University of Music Freiburg.[2] From 2009 to 2015, Widmann was a part-time Professor of Composition, succeeding Mathias Spahlinger, at the Institute for New Music at the University of Music Freiburg.[2][8][9] Since 2017, Widmann holds the Edward Said Chair in Composition at the Barenboim–Said Akademie, Berlin.[10]
Widmann's early string quartets are of particular note among his chamber music: the First Quartet was written in 1997, followed by the Chorale Quartet and the Hunting Quartet, the latter premiered in 2003 by the Arditti Quartet. 2005 saw the first performances of the Fourth Quartet and Experiment on a Fugue (Fifth Quartet, with soprano), with Juliane Banse and the Artemis Quartet. These five one-movement quartets form a cycle.[23][24][25][26]
Widmann's compositions draw on different musical genres. For example, he has written 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 (premiered in June 2005 by the Munich Philharmonic under Christian Thielemann).[27]
Widmann was Composer in Residence at the Salzburg Festival and at the chamber music festival Spannungen, Heimbach in 2004.[28][29] Octet was premiered on 4 June 2004 at the power plant Kraftwerk Heimbach.[30][31] In 2007, Pierre Boulez and the Vienna Philharmonic premiered his orchestral work Armonica.[32][33] In 2008, the Siemens Arts Program sent Widmann to Dubai.[b][35][36] The same year, he conducted a premiere rehearsal of his concert overture Con brio.[37] Widmann premiered Am Anfang[38] by Anselm Kiefer in July 2009 as part of the 20th anniversary of the Opéra Bastille, in which he acted as composer, clarinetist and made his debut as conductor.[19] He was Composer in Residence at the Lucerne Festival in 2009,[39] where on 13 August 2009, Heinz Holliger performed Widmann's oboe concerto, commissioned by the festival.[40] On 5 September Widmann premiered Holliger's Rechant for solo clarinet.[41] Widmann's Free Pieces for Ensemble: Number X is used in Sophie Fiennes's documentary Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow (2010), about the postwar German artist Anselm Kiefer.[42] His sister[2] Carolin Widmann premiered his études IV-VI for violin (2004–2010) at the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik on 23 April 2010.[43] From 2009 to 2011, he was the Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer Fellow at the Cleveland Orchestra.[44][45] He performed his Fantasie for Solo Clarinet (1993) to celebrate Walter Fink's 80th birthday at the Rheingau Musik Festival on 16 August 2010 and in 2014 was the festival's Composer and Artist in Residence.[46][47] In 2012, he collaborated with philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, who was the librettist for his second opera Babylon.[48] Widmann was the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich's Creative Chair in the 2015–16 season.[49][50]
The theatralic Viola Concerto (2015) announces a new period in Widmann's œuvre. Soloist of the premiere was Antoine Tamestit.
Berlin and Munich (Since 2017)
On 9 September 2015, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra proclaimed they were commissioning a work from Widmann as part of a planned collaboration by the two organizations beginning in the fall of 2017.[55] The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra announced Widmann's appointment as its first-ever Gewandhauskomponist (Gewandhaus Composer) for the 2017–18 season.[56]
On 27 January 2018, Widmann and the Hagen Quartet performed his Clarinet Quintet, as part of a European tour, at Amsterdam's Muziekgebouw aan het IJ.[62]Partita, five reminiscences for large orchestra, commissioned by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, was premiered in Leipzig on 8 March 2018 with Andris Nelsons conducting.[63]
Anne-Sophie Mutter is the dedicatee of String Quartet No. 6 (Study on Beethoven, 2019).[65][45] With this piece, Widmann began a new series of works in the genre for the Beethoven anniversary year 2020. The series comprises five quartets.
Widmann held the 2019–20 Richard and Barbara Debs Composer's Chair at Carnegie Hall.[66][67][45] During the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, he contributed to the online Festival of New Music with his composition empty space.[68][69][70] Barenboim and Emanuel Pahud curated the festival in the empty Pierre Boulez Saal.[68][71] Another commission from Leipzig and Boston is the lyrical trumpet concerto Toward Paradise.[72] It was premiered on 23 September 2021 at Gewandhaus with Håkan Hardenberger playing trumpet and Andris Nelsons conducting the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.[72] This work refers to Miles Davis.[73] On 8 June 2023, Kantate for soli, choir, organ and orchestra was premiered by Andreas Reize conducting Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and Thomanerchor in Leipzig, Thomaskirche, on occasion of the 300th anniversary of Johann Sebastian Bach taking office as Thomaskantor.[74]
Widmann lives and works in Berlin and Munich.[85][86]
Reception
According to Bachtrack, Widmann was in 2023 the third most performed living contemporary composer in the world, behind John Williams and Arvo Pärt.[c][89]
Style
Widmann cannot be pinned down to a specific personal style or composition school.[82] His music has been described as varied and imaginative.[90] In his experimental and technically demanding early work,[91][92][93] Widmann integrates serialism and noise in traditional sources.[94] He focuses on sounds, not tones.[95] Widmann has written pieces without pitches and also purely tonal pieces with exaggerated familiar gestures.[96][94] In many of his compositions, Widmann is in a musical "dialogue" with Classical and Romantic composers such as Mozart,[97] Beethoven,[98][99] Schumann,[100][101] Mendelssohn,[102][103] Schubert[104][105] and Brahms.[50][106][107] He wrote musical tributes to these composers.[107][50]
Widmann's scores show extremely precise, well-considered structures and instructions.[108] A common instruction is, that the soloist moves around the stage, for example in Viola Concerto, Towards Paradise and Kantate.[109][74] Widmann integrates the soloist of his concertos into the creative process.[110] He uses extended techniques in many compositions, such as Con brio.[98][45] Beside the influence of his musical idols, Widmann finds inspiration in literature, poems, paintings and sculptures.[111] He frequently uses literary sources for his compositions, like Matthias Claudius, Klabund, Heinrich Heine, Peter Sloterdijk, Clemens Brentano and Friedrich Schiller in his oratorio ARCHE.[112][113] In his 2023 Bach-homage Kantate (called: "Friedenskantate", peace cantata),[114] he used texts by Matthias Claudius, Jean Paul, Bertolt Brecht, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Paul Gerhardt and from the Bible.[74][115]
2006 Claudio-Abbado-Kompositionspreis of the Orchester-Akademie of the Berlin Philharmonic for Quintet for oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon and piano[122]
Widmann, Jörg (2019). "Utopian Music? The Exception as the Quintessence". Beethoven 250. Unter der Oberfläche / Beneath the Surface. Essays zum Beethovenjahr / Essays for the Beethoven Year. Berlin: Pierre Boulez-Saal. Retrieved 29 June 2020.
Widmann, Jörg; Kiefer, Anselm; Missler-Morell, Andreas (2009), ... und es wird Klang – der Komponist Jörg Widmann (in German), [Erscheinungsort nicht ermittelbar]: ZDF, OCLC916866277
Faltin, Sigrid; Mutter, Anne-Sophie; SWR Classic (Firm); SWR Media GmbH (2023), Anne-Sophie Mutter – Vivace (in German), [Deutschland]: SWR Classic, OCLC1390093297
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Balk, Georgine Maria-Magdalena (2007). Zwischen Tradition und Innovation – "Das Gesicht im Spiegel" von Jörg Widmann und Roland Schimmelpfennig (in German). München: GRIN Verlag. ISBN978-3-638-72776-1.
Besthorn, Florian Henri (1 March 2018). Echo, Spiegel, Labyrinth: Der musikalische Körper im Werk Jörg Widmanns (Klangfiguren) (in German). Vol. 1. Königshausen & Neumann. ISBN978-3-8260-6299-5.