*1978, Munich
Work
empty space
for Five Players (2020)
- 00:05 Ear-openers: Encounters with Pierre Boulez
- 02:58 Productive differences: Boulez the conductor
- 06:44 Composing in an empty space
- 09:06 Performing the space
- 13:00 Longing for togetherness
Born in Munich in 1973, Jörg Widmann has been closely associated with the Pierre Boulez Saal since its opening and holds the Edward W. Said Chair as Professor of Composition at the Barenboim-Said Akademie. He has frequently appeared here as a clarinetist, and his music is heard regularly. He studied clarinet at the Munich Musikhochschule and New York’s Juilliard School as well as composition with Wilfried Hiller, Hans Werner Henze, Heiner Goebbels, and Wolfgang Rihm. As a performer, he is particularly focused on chamber music, appearing with artists such as Daniel Barenboim, Tabea Zimmermann, Heinz Holliger, Sir András Schiff, and Hélène Grimaud, while also receiving invitations to perform with the world’s leading symphony orchestras. Several composers have written new pieces for him, including Wolfgang Rihm, Aribert Reimann, and Heinz Holliger. His body of work as a composer spans almost all musical forms and genres, with his six string quartets holding an especially important place within his chamber music output: the first five—from the First String Quartet of 1997 to Choralquartett, Jagdquartett, and the Fourth String Quartet, to Versuch über die Fuge written in 2005—form a interrelated cycle; with his sixth quartet, Studie über Beethoven, commissioned by Anne-Sophie Mutter in 2019, Widmann began a new series of works in this genre. Another group of works for various line-ups, entitled Labyrinth, also forms a loosely associated cycle. The latest part of the series, Labyrinth IV for soprano and ensemble, was premiered by Daniel Barenboim, Sarah Aristidou, and the Boulez Ensemble at the Pierre Boulez Saal in June 2019. Jörg Widmann’s music often reveals its poetic power in a productive dialogue with musical traditions, whether these are specific genres or individual musical personalities, referenced in more or less explicit, purely musical or programmatic connections. Lied (2003/07), Chor (2004), and Messe (2005) for orchestra form a trilogy that explores the transformation of vocal genres onto instrumental ensembles. Armonica was premiered by Pierre Boulez and the Vienna Philharmonic in 2007. Concertos include compositions for eminent soloists such as Christian Tetzlaff, Isabelle Faust, Yefim Bronfman, Heinz Holliger, Antoine Tamestit, and Carolin Widmann. The oratorio ARCHE was performed during the opening festival of Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie in 2017. Das Gesicht im Spiegel, premiered in 2003 and named best new piece of the year by the Opernwelt magazine, marked Jörg Widmann’s first major success on the operatic stage. It was followed by Am Anfang, written in collaboration with Anselm Kiefer for the 20th anniversary of the Opéra Bastille in Paris, and, most recently, Babylon on a text by Peter Sloterdijk, first heard at the Bavarian State Opera in 2012 and, in a revised version, at Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden in 2019. Jörg Widmann has been composer in residence at major musical institutions—among them the Lucerne Festival, the Salzburg Festival, and, during the 2019–20 season, the New York Philharmonic and Cologne’s WDR Radio Symphony—and received numerous awards. Over the past several years he has also made a name for himself as a conductor.
There is hardly anybody whom I learnt more from, as a clarinet player, than Pierre Boulez. Jörg Widmann