Programme Guide

Jörg Widmann, the Berliner Philharmoniker’s Composer in Residence for the 2023/24 season, is also in demand as a clarinettist in the concert hall. Having already performed his highly virtuosic Fantasie for solo clarinet as part of his residency, he now performs his second solo piece for clarinet, Drei Schattentänze. According to Widmann, 20 years after his youthful work from 1993, he fell in love once again with this composition “with the soul and inner life of this wonderful, mysterious instrument”.

To fall in love with is also the theme that Felix Mendelssohn created for the middle movement of his clarinet sonata is also something to fall in love with. Its lilting, melancholy melody epitomises the yearning spirit of Romanticism, which Mendelssohn fashioned here into a song without words. Perhaps it was the closeness of the clarinet’s sound to the human voice that inspired the composer to write his only solo work for a wind instrument. Widmann will be accompanied on the piano by Annika Treutler.

The Freie Stücke, which are performed here by members of the Berliner Philharmoniker, are a prime example of Widmann’s delight in tonal experimentation. Each of the ten movements is dedicated to a specific phenomenon and establishes a new element at the end that leads to the next piece – a kind of musical domino effect.