Budapest Festival Orchestra

As was expected in the 19th century, Mendelssohn was not only a composer but performance artist and conductor, too. Today, there are few such polymaths in music but Jörg Widmann is certainly one. For this recital he takes to the stage in all three capacities: conducting his own works and at the beginning of the concert as a soloist. The programme is bookended by two works of Mendelssohn who was just 15 but already formulating his own stylistic traits, while between them Widmann’s works focusing on abbreviated forms. The world-class clarinettist often selects material from music of the past, but he does so with such unaffectedness and conjures up such an original sound that we feel the result is both familiar and startlingly new. The first work in the Widmann bloc is the 10-movement Free Pieces, in which the movements concentrate on various acoustic phenomena. Con brio (2008) is a Beethoven homage while 180 Beats Per Minute was inspired by a techno rhythm.