A multi-talented contemporary
Composer and performer. At one time this combination was unremarkable, even natural, whereas today Jörg Widmann is one of only few who represent this – sadly relatively rare – hybrid musician: equal talented in both capacities, and of course to a remarkably high standard.
“I like diversity and I am too inquisitive not to combine these things,” commented Munich-born composer and clarinetist Jörg Widmann, as he explained his primary musical motivation in an interview not long ago. Budapest concertgoers who know him well will nod in acknowledgement at these words. The fact is, Widmann is a regular – one could almost say homecoming – guest of Hungarian music life: we have had the opportunity of meeting him as a virtuoso artist of his chosen instrument, as a contemporary composer and conductor of his own works, as concerto soloist and chamber musician, not to mention as a partner of Budapest Festival Orchestra and Dénes Várjon.
Photo: Marco Borggreve
Our feeling for Widmann is mutual. As he put it in an earlier statement: “I have to tell you that I have always loved Budapest not just as a city, but as a musical city. I have always had the feeling here that people listen differently. Music means something. [...] For them [Hungarians] it is still sacred.” It is worth mentioning that Widmann truly has the experience on which to make such a comparison, as following his studies in Munich, and then his training in New York as a student of the legendary Juilliard School, he soon became a globe-trotting concert musician.
He is no less sought-after as a composer; indeed, over the years the world premieres of his works for grand orchestra have been conducted by top artists such as Pierre Boulez, Kent Nagano and Christian Thielemann. His interest in this side of music also began as a youngster in Munich, at the tender age of eight; Widmann eventually went on to study under Hans Werner Henze and Wolfgang Rihm, among others. An English critic characterized his compositional activities, which span the most varied genres from string quartets to opera, in the following way: “His music is a dialogue, homage and continuation of the essential concerns of the music he loves most: Beethoven, Schumann, Schubert, Mozart, Mahler, Berg – as well as Rihm and Helmut Lachenmann.”
The audiences of the clarinet-playing Widmann understand very well his fertile and felicitous attitude to the system of traditions of Western music and its values stretching back over centuries. Should the listener fail to appreciate Widmann’s exceptional affinity with the past after listening to his orchestral composition Armonica, written for the largely forgotten glass harmonica, or his string quartet Jagdquartett, which boldly evokes Beethoven, then they will be certainly convinced by listening (and watching) the virtuoso launch with perceptive serenity into the principal part of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A major. The fact is, Jörg Widmann is not only a professor of his instrument – as much as he is a professor of composition – he is also a hedonist of the clarinet.
Ferenc László