"Focus Jörg Widmann II" with public rehearsal and chamber concert

pressemitteilung

From April 19 to 21, 2024, the HfMDK and the Alte Oper Frankfurt are dedicating an entire weekend to the exceptional artist Jörg Widmann. The multi-talented artist is active as a clarinettist, conductor, composer and teacher and can constantly draw on his bubbling wealth of ideas. Due to his impressive versatility, the Alte Oper presents a thematic focus with him as Artist in Focus for three consecutive seasons. While last season the focus was on Widmann's compositional work, this year it is on his teaching activities. As part of a project with students at the HfMDK, he will give a taste of this by rehearsing and performing his first five string quartets.

On April 21, 2024 from 7 pm, Widmann's five string quartets will be performed after a two-day work phase, played by five string quartets from Prof. Tim Vogler's chamber music class. The Fabrik Quartet (No. 1), the Parakosmos Quartet (No. 2), the Raròn Quartet (No. 3), the Oxalis Quartet (No. 4) and the Malion Quartet, which will perform together with Daria Tymoshenko due to the unusual instrumentation of String Quartet No. 5 with soprano solo, will be heard in the HfMDK's Great Hall.

The HfMDK ensembles will have the extraordinary opportunity to fine-tune their interpretations with the help of the composer. The joint work on the 3rd and 5th string quartets can be experienced in a public rehearsal on April 20, 2024 from 7 p.m. in the Small Hall of the HfMDK. All listeners who have a ticket for the concert on April 21 are invited to attend. Directly before the concert on April 21, Jörg Widmann will give a piano lecture on "Beautiful passages" from music of the past and present in the Small Hall from 6 pm. The concert ticket for 7 p.m. also serves as proof of admission.

Dates

Sa
20.04.
Su
21.04.

Prof. Tim Vogler premiered Widmann's 4th String Quartet with his colleagues from the Vogler Quartet in 2005 and is looking forward to the weekend with the "universal artist" with great anticipation: "I think it's great that the five ensembles have the opportunity, after they have familiarized themselves with the scores with the help of Prof. Lucas Fels and myself, to meet their creator and experience at first hand how lively Jörg Widmann's music is, how immediate; and how he himself conveys his ideas about it." For the students, the weekend promises to be an unforgettable part of their training at the HfMDK.

The weekend will kick off on April 19 at 8 pm with the chamber concert "Jörg Widmann & Friends" in the Mozart Hall of the Alte Oper, where Widmann will perform as a clarinettist and composer together with Nicolas Altstaedt (cello) and Dénes Várjon (piano) as well as the Catalan saxophone quartet Kebyart. Works by Schumann, Beethoven and Widmann will be performed. Among them is the German premiere of Widmann's 5 Albumblätter for cello and piano - just a few days after the work's world premiere in London.

Jörg Widmann

Jörg Widmann is one of the most exciting and versatile artists of his generation. In the 2023/24 season, he can once again be experienced worldwide in all his facets as a clarinettist, conductor and composer, including as Composer in Residence with the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, as Principal Guest Conductor of the NDR Radiophilharmonie, Guest Conductor of the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, Associated Conductor of the Munich Chamber Orchestra, Creative Partner of the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, Artistic Partner of the Riga Sinfonietta and Artist in Focus at the Alte Oper Frankfurt. Trained as a clarinettist and composer at the Universities of Music in Munich and Karlsruhe and at the Juilliard School in New York, Jörg Widmann himself was a professor of clarinet and composition at the Freiburg University of Music for many years. Since 2017, he has held a chair in composition at the Barenboim-Said Akademie Berlin.

Der Komponist Jörg Widmann in nachdenklicher Pose an einem Schreibtisch

Jörg Widmann

Fotocredit: Marco Borggreve

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The ensembles

Fabrik Quartet

The members of the Fabrik Quartet met in 2021 during their training at the International Ensemble Modern Academy (IEMA) in Frankfurt and are now studying at the HfMDK in the Master's program in Chamber Music. They continue to specialize in new and contemporary music and work a lot with contemporary composers.

Parakosmos Quartet

Four musicians with chamber music experience came together at the HfMDK in fall 2023 to form the Parakosmos Quartet. As part of the concert scholarship from the Frankfurter Bürgerstiftung and the HfMDK Frankfurt, they performed ostracized works by composers such as Rosy Wertheim, Henriëtte Bosmans, Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Bernhard Sekles in the Holzhausenschlösschen and would like to continue to draw the attention of concert audiences to underexposed works of the quartet literature.

  • Efi Polonidou (Vl. 1), Bodam Lee (Vl. 2), Anna Boida (Va.), Janis Marquard (Vc.)

Raròn Quartet

The Raròn Quartet was founded in February 2022. The current four members are about to complete their individual degree programs at the HfMDK and already have contracts with renowned orchestras. They also regularly come together as a quartet to present virtuoso chamber music with great depth and emotional closeness.

  • Hans Henning Ernst (Vl. 1), Carolin Grün (Vl. 2), Franziska Hügel (Va.), Joachim Jamaer (Vc.)

Oxalis Quartet

The Oxalis Quartet came together at the Mainz University of Music in 2017 and unites four young musicians from Moldova, Slovenia and Germany who share a great passion for the literature of the string quartet and are absorbed in it together. They have already performed in several countries and have won numerous awards, including a special prize at the Mendelssohn University Competition in Berlin.

Malion Quartet

The Malion Quartet is one of the most versatile quartets of the young up-and-coming generation and, in addition to its international concert activities, also pursues a special vision of music education that regularly attracts attention from the specialist press. Since its foundation in 2018, it has already won various awards and scholarships. The quartet members are the initiators of numerous projects of their own with the aim of bringing classical music to a wide audience through unusual concert formats.

Soprano Daria Tymoshenko was born in Kharkiv (Ukraine) and has been singing since the age of seven. She first studied at a music school in Kharkiv, then from 2018 at the National Academy of Music in Kiev. in 2019, an Erasmus exchange program enabled her to spend a year studying at the "Nino Rota" Conservatory in Monopoli (Italy). in 2022, she was forced to leave Ukraine with her family due to the Russian war of aggression. She has been studying classical voice at the HfMDK since October 2022.

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