Jörg Widmann

Jörg Widmann is one of the most impressive and versatile artists of his generation. His performances during the 2022/23 season demonstrate all aspects of his work, as a clarinettist, conductor and composer. He has been artist in residence with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, with the Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo and the National Symphony Orchestra in Taiwan and at deSingel in Antwerp. He has also performed with longstanding chamber music partners such as András Schiff, Daniel Barenboim, Denis Kozhukhin, the Schumann Quartet and the Hagen Quartet in concert at the Schwarzenberg und Hohenems Schubertiades, the Salzburg Festival, the Konzerthaus and Musikverein in Vienna, the Philharmonie de Paris and the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam.

Jörg Widmann is constantly expanding his activities as a conductor. He has appeared on the podium with the Konzerthaus Orchestra in Berlin, the Mozarteum Orchestra and the Camerata Salzburg, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona and the Radio Philharmonisch Orkest.

Jörg Widmann is a regular guest with major international orchestras such as the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Orchestre National de France, the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, working with conductors such as Kent Nagano, Christoph Eschenbach and Christoph von Dohnányi.

As a soloist he gave the world premiere of Mark Andre’s Clarinet Concerto at the Donaueschingen Festival in 2015. Other works composed for or dedicated to him include Wolfgang Rihm’s Musik für Klarinette und Orchester (1999) and Aribert Reimann’s Cantus (2006).

He studied composition with Kay Westermann, Wilfried Hiller, Hans Werner Henze and Wolfgang Rihm. Conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, Daniel Harding, Kent Nagano, Christian Thielemann, Andris Nelsons, Simon Rattle and Franz Welser-Möst regularly perform his music, while orchestras such as the Vienna, Berlin and New York Philharmonics, as well as the Orchestre de Paris and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, have given premieres of his work and regularly include his music in their repertory. In December 2022 he conducted the Ensemble Modern in the world premiere of his piece Tartaros (Labyrinth VII) for 13 instruments at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. In June 2023, this year’s Bachfest Leipzig  opened with the world premiere of his cantata for soloists, choir, organ and orchestra (in celebration of the 300th anniversary of Johann Sebastian Bach’s taking office in the city).

Jörg Widmann has held the composition chair at the Barenboim-Said Academy since 2017. He is a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, the Free Academy of the Arts in Hamburg and the Mainz Academy of Science and Literature, which awarded him the Robert Schumann Prize for Poetry and Music in 2018.