NEW@NIGHT: The Genius of Jörg Widmann
Mirroring Beethoven’s multifaceted mastery, revolutionary German composer, virtuosic clarinetist, and leading conductor Jörg Widmann is one of today’s greatest inheritors of Beethoven’s legacy. Widmann is considered one of the most versatile and intriguing artists of this generation, with his works ranging from chamber to symphonic and operatic. Experience Widmann’s impressive versatility, including the U.S. Premiere of his CMNW Co-Commissioned Ninth String Quartet, influenced by Beethoven’s elusive String Quartet No. 14.
6pm | Happy Hour & Conversation with Jörg Widmann
Post-concert Q&A with artists
CMNW Co-Commission • U.S. Premiere
Jörg Widmann’s String Quartet No. 9 was co-commissioned by Chamber Music Northwest with the generous support of the CMNW Commissioning Fund.
The Old Church
Wednesday, 7/24 • 7:00 pm PT
Program
Click on any piece of music below to learn more about it.
- JÖRG WIDMANN Etude No. 2 for Solo Violin (2001)
JÖRG WIDMANN Etude No. 2 for Solo Violin (2001)
Most composers play one or more instruments proficiently, but few are equally at home performing as they are writing music. Such is the case for German composer and clarinetist Jörg Widmann (b. 1973), one of the most frequently performed composers living today.
Widmann’s wealth of experience as a performer has helped him forge a style that explores the true diversity of sound that can be created by musicians and their instruments. His approach, sometimes called Klangkomposition (sound composition), focuses on shaping the overall sound environment created by the performers over time rather than focusing on concepts like melody or harmony.
Widmann described the opening section of his 2001 Etude No. 2 for Solo Violin as a “three-part chorale.” If you’re wondering how a violinist can even play three parts at the same time, they can’t (except by “rolling” the chords). Widmann instead asks the performer to sing one note of his chorale while playing the other two—a challenge only accepted by the bravest of violinists.
The étude continues with what Widmann describes as a “journey…to spirited, unbridled virtuosity.” Throughout this musical voyage, he employs a variety of extended techniques—such as playing below the bridge or striking the instrument with one’s hand—to create a remarkably varied soundscape from the efforts of a single musician.
—© Ethan Allred
- JÖRG WIDMANN Selected Duos for Violin & Cello (Heidelberg Version) (2008)
JÖRG WIDMANN Selected Duos for Violin & Cello (Heidelberg Version) (2008)
No. XIV. Capriccio, Op. 2, No. 1
No. XXII. Lamento, Op. 2, No. 9
No. XXI. Valse bavaroise, Op. 2, No. 8
No. XIII. Vier Strophen vom Heimweh, Op. 1, No. 8
No. XXIV. Toccatina all’inglese, Op. 2, No. 11My initial intention was to write a few small duos for violin and violoncello. I could not then have imagined that this would ultimately produce 24 duos created in elated compositional excess. The result is two volumes containing 13 and 11 duos respectively.
For a while, I retained great respect for the vulnerability and reductive nature of this duo constellation, and my tonal powers of imagination remained curiously inhibited and one dimensional. I was somehow only able to produce a small number of scattered and tonally extremely brittle and sparse tonal constellations. I then decided to make these unprotected and naked two-part structures deliberately audible in certain movements. In almost all remaining pieces, I extended the harmony to form a three- and frequently even four-part structure. The substantial number of the resulting double stops represents a particular technical challenge for both instruments, but it is precisely this almost continuously utilized technique which produces the specific tonal quality of the work.
The character and duration of the individual pieces could hardly be more varied, but a harmonic thread runs through all movements. Violin and violoncello simultaneously form a comparable and incomparable pair. In these duos, both instruments are inseparably dependent on one another and cannot exist without each other. It is also essential to visualize the predominant compositional technique in the literal sense of “note against note” as strictly contrapuntal. Everything is interwoven, and everything one instrument does has consequences for the other. They attract each other, reject each other, love and hate each other, sometimes throw balls back and forth in play and then suddenly with an almost destructive intent. The playful elements of the work therefore always remain serious and the serious elements playful. Tricks and effects are totally absent: I have concentrated on the bare and essential musical substance right down to the most miniature phrases.
Substantial parts of the duos were composed in distant Dubai. This seems to have proved to have been an extremely inspirational and productive time for me, even though the titles of certain movements such as “Valse bavaroise” in Vol. 2 or the final piece in Vol. 1 “Four Verses of Homesickness” tell of a different type of longing.
—© Jorg Widmann, translated by Lindsay Chalmers-Gerbracht
- JÖRG WIDMANN String Quartet No. 9, Study on Beethoven IV (2022)
JÖRG WIDMANN (b. 1973) String Quartet No. 9, Study on Beethoven IV (2022)
The 9th String Quartet is the penultimate quartet in my Beethoven study string quartet cycle. Chronologically, however, it was written after the 10th Quartet Cavatina. And indeed, composing it felt like completing the cycle. While the 6th Quartet, Study on Beethoven, which opened the cycle was in one movement, the 7th in two movements and the 8th in three movements, this 9th Quartet is a four-movement work. The sacred number 9 in music challenged me to create a particularly dense and intense work. In particular, the 2nd movement, the Scherzo movement and the 4th movement, Allegro alla Marcia, are downright monstrous in their scope and their incessant density of information and impulse compared to their historical models. This 9th quartet enjoys working on Beethoven’s still unrivaled C-sharp Minor String Quartet, Op. 131. The radicality and modernity of this work are still burningly relevant for us today. As with the other quartets in the Beethoven study cycle, I was surprised by the new forms that engaging with the historical model enabled me to explore, and the previously hidden soul spaces of my own music that this work opened up to me. My engagement with the Beethoven symphonies in the orchestral piece Con brio resulted in the discovery of new tonal possibilities of the orchestra (the timpani treatment!), while the comparison of Beethoven’s choral fantasy with the Latin Dies irae in my ARCHE oratorio resulted in new theological highlights has become possible, in the string quartet cycle it is above all the emergence and discovery of new forms that could only emerge through the engagement with Beethoven’s quartets.
—© Jörg Widmann
Artists
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Michael Müller
Cello
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Michael Müller was born in Gunzburg at the Donau. His father came from Transylvania and his mother from Austria. He studied cello at the Musikhochschule Muenchen and the Universitaet der Kuenste in Berlin, participating in masterclasses with Boris Pergamenschikof, David Geringas, and Heinrich Schiff. From 1987 till 1995 he was solo cellist of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. Between 1995 and 2013 he was solo cellist of the Radio Kamerorkest resp. Radio Kamerfilharmonie. In 2013, he became solo cellist of the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest. He trained as a chamber musician with Walter Levin (Lasalle Quartet), Amadeus Quartet in Cologne, and with Sandor Vegh in Salzburg. From 1998 till 2012 he was cellist of the Párkányí Quartet (formerly the Orlando Quartet). In 2014, he became a member of the ensemble LUDWIG. From autumn 2019 he is member of the Ruysdael Quartet. Michael Müller regularly appears as a chamber musician at many European festivals (Edingburgh Festival, Holland Festival, Salzburger Festspiele, Aldeburgh Festival). He recorded cello concertos by H. Andriessen, Georgi Minchev, and Henk Badings. He plays on a cello by Januarius Gagliano (Napoli, 1734), made available by the Dutch National Instrument Faoundation.
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Emi Ohi Resnick
Violin
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A native of New York City, Emi Ohi Resnick made her debut in Carnegie Hall at the age of fifteen and has performed throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan since then. Ms. Resnick has had numerous works written for her and performs regularly in various chamber music groups, including the Blaeu string quartet, the Ruysdael string quartet, the Ensemble Modern (Frankfurt), the Context Ensemble (with Sergiu Luca), and the contemporary music group, Möbius, currently Ensemble-in-Residence at Columbia University in New York City.
Ms. Resnick studied at the Curtis Institute of Music with Szymon Goldberg, The Juilliard School with Louise Behrend and Robert Mann, the Prague Mozart Academy with Sàndor Vègh, and the Mozarteum of Salzburg with Thomas Riebl and Ruggiero Ricci, and has worked closely with the composer György Kurtàg. She has been regularly invited to the Marlboro Music Festival and the International Musicians Seminar in Prussia Cove, England. Ms. Resnick currently divides her time between the United States and Europe, where she is Concertmaster of the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic and was Professor of Violin at the North Netherlands Conservatory. Ms. Resnick plays a Francesco Ruggieri violin made in Cremona in 1692. This violin was previously part of the Costa collection and was used by Zino Francescati.
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Joris van Rijn
Violin
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After having passed with distinction for both Bachelor’s (1998) and Master’s (2000) degrees in The Hague, Joris van Rijn entered The Juilliard School in New York, studying with Glenn Dicterow (Concertmaster of the N.Y. Philharmonic) and Robert Mann.
In 2001, he obtained a Professional Studies degree for solo violin, chamber music, and orchestra. Since September 2002, Joris is 1st Concertmaster of the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and the Radio Chamber Philharmonic (Holland). He regularly performs as Concertmaster in several Dutch orchestras.
As a soloist, Joris played with the Residentie Orchestra (The Hague), the Noord Holland Philharmonic Orchestra, the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Radio Symphony Orchestra (Holland).
In September 2002, his debut CD was released, containing contemporary caprices for solo violin written by 24 Dutch composers. He is frequently invited to chamber music festivals throughout Europe as a member of the Ruysdael Quartet and Ensemble Cameleon.
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Jörg Widmann
Composer & Clarinet
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Jörg Widmann is considered one of the most versatile and intriguing artists of his generation. The 2023/24 season sees him appear in all facets of his work, as a clarinetist, conductor, and composer, including as Composer in Residence of Berliner Philharmoniker and Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, as Principal Guest Conductor of NDR Radiophilharmonie, Guest Conductor of Mozarteum Orchester Salzburg, Associated Conductor of Münchener Kammerorchester, Creative Partner of Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, Artistic Partner of Riga Sinfonietta, and Artist in Focus at Alte Oper Frankfurt.
Jörg Widmann studied clarinet with Gerd Starke in Munich and Charles Neidich at the Juilliard School in New York and later became Professor of Clarinet and Composition, first at University of Music Freiburg and since 2017 as Chair Professor for Composition at the Barenboim-Said Academy Berlin. He is a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin and a full member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, Free Academy of the Arts in Hamburg (2007), German Academy of Dramatic Arts, and Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz (2016), and received an Honorary Doctorate from University of Limerick, Ireland in February 2023.
This season sees the world premiere of Jörg Widmann’s Schumannliebe für Bariton und Ensemble with Matthias Goerne, Peter Rundel, and the Remix Ensemble at Casa da Música. Currently, he is writing a Horn Concerto, commissioned by the Berliner Philharmoniker, to be premiered by Stefan Dohr and the Berliner Philharmoniker under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle at Philharmonie Berlin in May 2024.
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Ruysdael Quartet
String Quartet
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Joris van Rijn, violin
Emi Ohi Resnick, violin
Gijs Kramers, viola
Michael Müller, celloThe Ruysdael Quartet, one of the top Dutch string quartets for over 25 years, started their journey winning prizes at the Charles Hennen and Bordeaux competitions, as well as the prestigious Dutch Kersjesprijs. They perform regularly on all Dutch stages and tour frequently abroad, including recent appearances at the Brighton Festival in the UK and the Zunfkonzerte Lavatertage Festival in Zurich. Highlights of the last few seasons include the honor of be invited to accompany their majesties the King and Queen of the Netherlands on their state visit to France, as well as a Wigmore Hall debut and tours of Japan and Turkey.
The Ruysdael Quartet’s repertoire spans from Purcell to contemporary works and many composers have written especially for them, including Jörg Widmann, whose 9th quartet they premiered in 2023. For their 25th anniversary, no fewer than 25 Dutch composers wrote miniatures for the quartet in celebration. The Ruysdael Quartet often collaborates with prominent artists such as Nino Gvetadze, Jörg Widmann, Charles Neidich, Lenneke Ruiten, and Thomas Riebl. They also have their own festival, the Zoom! Chamber Music Festival, which takes place annually in and around Rheden. The quartet’s recordings have been praised in the national and international press, and they have frequently been selected as a favorite in the Dutch radio program Diskotabel’s blind comparisons.