Jörg Widmann is one of the most remarkable and versatile artists of his generation. From 2026, he will serve as the new Artistic Director of the Lucerne Festival Academy. Beyond this role, he can be enjoyed worldwide in all his artistic guises – as a clarinettist, conductor and composer – currently in his third season as Principal Guest Conductor of the NDR Radiophilharmonie, Associated Conductor of the Munich Chamber Orchestra and Artistic Partner of Sinfonietta Riga. Upcoming guest engagements will see him conduct the Oslo Philharmonic, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest, the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, the Budapest Festival Orchestra and the Bamberg Symphony. In February 2026, Jörg Widmann performed the world premiere of Olga Neuwirth’s clarinet concerto »Zones of Blue«, which is dedicated to him, with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Sir Simon Rattle. Other clarinet concertos written for and dedicated to him include Wolfgang Rihm’s »Musik für Klarinette und Orchester« (1999) and Aribert Reimann’s »Cantus« (2006). Conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, Daniel Harding, Kent Nagano, Franz Welser-Möst, Christian Thielemann, Iván Fischer, Andris Nelsons and Sir Simon Rattle regularly perform his music with orchestras including the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics, the New York Philharmonic, the Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris and the London Symphony Orchestra. His long-standing chamber music partners include Isabelle Faust, Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Carolin Widmann as well as the Hagen, Signum and Amabile Quartets. Since 2017, Widmann has held a chair in composition at the Barenboim-Said Akademie in Berlin.
Jörg Widmann
»Like so many of us, my first encounter with the Staatskapelle Dresden was on vinyl: namely the legendary recording of ›Der Freischütz‹ conducted by Carlos Kleiber. I vividly recall the silky, supple string tone and the woodwind and brass with their unforgettable pride, magic and nobility. It was through Weber that I found my way to the Staatskapelle. For this reason, I am particularly delighted to share a residency with the orchestra during the Weber anniversary year of 2026.
I find great inspiration in Weber’s music. Probably there’s not a single piece of mine that isn’t connected in some way to Schumann, who also enjoyed close ties to Dresden. Yet so much of Weber’s compositional language laid the foundations for Schumann, as it did for Mendelssohn and Wagner as well as Weber’s contemporaries, Beethoven and Schubert. It represents an entire lineage of German Early Romanticism, for which I feel a personal and creative affinity, and which we shall explore together in this season’s programmes.
Naturally, as a clarinettist, I hold Weber especially close to my heart; he wrote wonderful works that expanded the expressive horizons of my instrument. Another significant and personal link to Dresden is through my clarinet teacher, Gerd Starke. In the entrance hall of his home in Munich there hung a portrait of Weber from his Dresden years. Starke himself was a member of the Staatskapelle Dresden from 1952 to 1956, and for him, Dresden and its orchestra always remained the ideal. As a young student in Munich in the early 1990s, I took part in an exchange with the Dresden College of Music. Starke proudly led us through ›his Dresden‹ – a city where one can breathe in the music at every turn.
I love the layers of history interwoven in Dresden, yet I do not look back on this tradition with mere nostalgia or sentimentality. On the contrary, as an artist of today, I ask the question: Is it still relevant to us? And my answer is: Yes, profoundly so. Although I am aware that having a Composer-in-Residence and Artist-in-Residence in one and the same person is an exception in the Staatskapelle’s history, this honour feels entirely in harmony with the traditions of previous centuries when composers performed and performers composed, when most artists were also teachers, and cross-border exchange was felt to be an essential part of creative growth and social progress. In this sense, the past points the way forward. I simply could not imagine a life as a composer without my clarinet, my work as a conductor without my role as a teacher and mentor, or my function as an artist in today’s Germany without literature and an ongoing connection to people from all over the world. Without these elements, I would not be who I am – and, I dare say, neither would the precious Staatskapelle. As kindred spirits, I look forward immensely to our time together.«
