Jörg Widmann & Hagen Quartet

Singing, floating, love - what takes a long time becomes wonderful - this could be the title of Jörg Widmann's Clarinet Quintet, completed in 2017, which took around eight years to come to paper: ,,I immediately felt that the wait had been worth it, the music just poured out of me." The Hagen Quartet had already suggested a joint work in 2009; but anyone who loves music, and in particular the clarinet literature, as much as Jörg Widmann does, does not simply join the ranks of Mozart, Brahms & Co. And so you can hear in the finished work the awareness of the tradition in which the large single-movement Adagio stands and to which it repeatedly refers through motivic and atmospheric elements. "Singing, floating, love: in hardly any other piece have I devoted myself to these topoi as uninhibitedly as in this clarinet quintet of mine."

Combining Widmann's quintet in concert with Mozart's inspiration from K. 581 remains an ingenious pairing. Not only musically, but also because they are both resounding documents of artistic friendships: "I was also inspired by the knowledge that I would be premiering the work together with the Hagen Quartet," says Widmann. "There is probably no other string quartet with whom I share such an intimate and intense history." Being musically on an equal footing is all the more important in Widmann's clarinet quintet, as the strings are not so much accompanists to the clarinet as they are its stimulating partners in dialog. In Mozart's case, we know that we owe the Clarinet Quintet in A major to his friend and lodge brother Anton Stadler: his skills as a clarinettist were such a clear inspiration that the work was given the nickname "Stadler's Quintet" at the time.

Program:
Widmann, Clarinet Quintet (2017)
Mozart, Clarinet Quintet in A major KV 581 "Stadler Quintet"

Jörg Widmann, clarinet
Hagen Quartet

EUR 63,- / 51,- / 37,- incl. fees

Jörg Widmann | Photo © Marco Borggreve