No posters of Bon Jovi or Queen for young Widmann—his room had portraits of the ever-perfectionist composer/conductor Pierre Boulez and the innovative jazz trumpeter Miles Davis. "But I had pictures of beautiful women too!" he adds when asked. Oh, and he played football as well, a midfielder, to be more specific. At 12, he toured Japan with his clarinet, and by 15, he composed his first chamber opera, with a little help from music drama legend Hans Werner Henze. His school grades? They took a backseat to music.

Born in Munich in 1973, Jörg Widmann has forged a brilliant career not only as a clarinetist but also as a conductor and one of today’s most renowned German composers.

His impressive body of work includes orchestral compositions, solo concertos, and music theater pieces such as Das Gesicht im Spiegel (2003), Am Anfang (2009), Babylon (2012), and the dramatic oratorio ARCHE (2017). His Con brio, a thrilling stylistic collage in homage to Beethoven—whom he greatly admires—premiered in 2008 under Mariss Jansons and has since been performed by over 60 conductors. According to The New York Times in 2020, it’s one of the most performed orchestral works of the century.

Widmann is also passionate about playing chamber music, frequently collaborating with renowned artists such as Daniel Barenboim, Tabea Zimmermann, Heinz Holliger, András Schiff, Kim Kashkashian, and Hélène Grimaud. He has composed numerous works for smaller ensembles. Five of his ten string quartets are inspired by Beethoven. While working on them, he says he 'went to bed with Beethoven and woke up with him.' Widmann adds, 'The final result can (...) end up miles away from the original. Creating a mere stylistic copy would be artistically worthless—it is my duty as a composer to create something new.

And let’s not forget, amidst all this, he also teaches clarinet and composition.