Jörg Widmann was born in Munich in 1973. At seven he began studying clarinet and at eleven started composition lessons. After completing high school, he continued with both disciplines at Munich’s Music School and the Juilliard School in New York. His teachers included Gerd Starke and Charles Neidich in clarinet and Hans Werner Henze, Wilfried Hiller, Heiner Goebbels, and Wolfgang Rihm in composition. As a clarinetist he has performed with many acclaimed orchestras in Germany and abroad, working with such conductors as Christoph von Dohnányi, Sylvain Cambreling, Christoph Eschenbach, and Kent Nagano. Numerous contemporary clarinet concertos have been dedicated to him, including works by Wolfgang Rihm and Aribert Reimann. His leading passion is for chamber music, which he performs with Tabea Zimmermann, Heinz Holliger, András Schiff, Kim Kashkashian, and Hélène Grimaud. In 2001 Jörg Widmann was named professor of clarinet at the Freiburg Music School. As a composer, Widmann has created several works of musical theater: most recently, Das Gesicht im Spiegel, which was staged at the Munich Opera Fetival in 2003 and was chosen by Opernwelt as the most important world premiere of the year. In the field of orchestral music, Widmann’s major works include the trilogy Song (the Bamberg Symphony under Jonathan Nott in 2003), Chorus (thr DSO Berlin under Kent Nagano in 2004), and Mass (the Munich Philharmonic under Christian Thielemann in 2005). In January 2007 Widmann’s work in homage to Mozart, Armonica, received its world premiere with Pierre Boulez and the Vienna Philharmonic Pierre Boulez, while in September 2008 Mariss Jansons conducted the premiere of con brio in Munich. Widmann’s chamber music compositions include five string quartets. Widmann has been honored with the Hindemith Prize and the Schneider-Schott Music Prize (both in 2002), the Arnold Schönberg Prize (2004), and the Claudio Abbado Prize in Composition (2006).
First appearance at the LUCERNE FESTIVAL in connection with the Debut series of concerts on August 27, 2002 in works by Stravinsky, Berg, and Bartók, as well as in his own compositions.