Jörg Widmann

This piece centres on the medium of air. I wanted to produce a musical interpretation of the mythical figure of Icarus. This myth says a lot about the role of the artist. I have been inspired by a won...

The Aria for strings composed in Aldeburgh in 2015 is an aria in the literal sense: the multiple divided strings give the impression of imaginary voices. Each part is separately developed in the funda...

My quartets composed between 1997 and 2005 were conceived as an interconnected, self-contained cycle of works ranging from the (in my opinion) quasi revolutionary Quartet No. 1 to the Quartet No. 5 en...

My String Quartet No. 7 – the second of my ‘Beethoven studies’ – is the first of my quartets to possess a two-movement structure. The density of texture is additionally enhanced, meaning that the open...

My String Quartet No. 8 is made up of three movements, and a fast tempo prevails almost throughout the entire work. The extreme brevity of the opening movement oscillates between rugged unisono passag...

I consider Beethoven’s String Quartet op. 130 with its Grosse Fuge as the pinnacle of all quartets. In each of the four movements, Beethoven succeeds in re-inventing the archetypal movement forms with...

The 9th String Quartet forms the penultimate work in my Beethoven Study quartet cycle. Chronologically, however, it was composed after the 10th Quartet Cavatina. And indeed, when composing it, it felt...

Jörg Widmann, an internationally sought-after soloist and professor of clarinet at the Freiburg Musikhochschule, displays the exquisite refinement of contemporary clarinet sound in 'Fünf Bruchstücke'...

Over the years, the saxophone quartet genre had been rather foreign to me - until I heard the Kebyart Ensemble. The homogeneity and virtuosity of the sound of these four young Catalan saxophonists mad...

Widmann's Études für Violine solo are in the tradition of Paganini's Capricen or the piano études by Chopin, Liszt and Ligeti: artistically autonomous concert pieces on one specific technical problem...

Widmann's Études für Violine solo are in the tradition of Paganini's Capricen or the piano études by Chopin, Liszt and Ligeti: artistically autonomous concert pieces on one specific technical problem...

Widmann's 'Études' for solo violin are in the tradition of the caprices by Paganini and the piano studies by Chopin, Liszt and Ligeti: artistically autonomous concertante pieces on a specific technica...

'Ein Orakelspruch für sechs Kontrabässe' (An oracle for six double-basses) - this is how Widmann calls his composition which he wrote upon commission of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra on the occasi...

The five strings quartets by Jörg Widmann are compact studies, like those of his teacher Wolfgang Rihm. Performed individually, the focus is on the respective central technical and aesthetic idea. Per...

The five strings quartets by Jörg Widmann are compact studies, like those of his teacher Wolfgang Rihm. Performed individually, the focus is on the respective central technical and aesthetic idea. Per...

My 2nd string quartet is one single slow movement. The piece does not directly reflect Joseph Haydn's Seven Last Words but I would not have been able to write it without knowing that work. The movemen...

The Jagdquartett (Hunt Quartet), which Jörg Widmann wrote as his third string quartet in 2003, following the Choralquartett, also begins with a visible gesture. After a short signal cry from the perfo...

This 'Suite' is not one of my 'epic' instrumental concertos such as the concertos for cello, violin or oboe, but a substantially smaller-structured series of dance forms arranged into a suite. Sunken...

The horn piece 'Air' requires a highly virtuosic technique, as indeed it should since it was composed in 2005 as the compulsory piece for the 54th International Music Competition of the ARD. At the sa...

The horn piece 'Air' requires a highly virtuosic technique, as indeed it should since it was composed in 2005 as the compulsory piece for the 54th International Music Competition of the ARD. At the sa...

After several pieces dealing with flow and mastery of a large-scale form, in 1997 I became fascinated by the idea of Bruch pieces: reduction, abridgement, concentration. The instruments I had grown fo...

Widmann views in his 'Three Shadow Dances' again the clarinet from a completely different perspective and thereby encourages young clarinetists to develop an enthusiastic and playful approach to micro...