Orfeo is proud to present Jörg Widmann’s first recording of Mozart’s incomparable Clarinet Concerto, which is also the prelude to a series of further projects with the world-renowned clarinettist.

This performance is a live recording from a concert in the Berlin Philharmonie, featuring composer and conductor Peter Ruzicka on the podium. Both in Widmann’s remarks in the accompanying booklet and above all in his performance itself, we can undoubtedly recognise an advanced sensibility on his part for the special subtleties and the hidden qualities of this late work by Mozart – a sensibility won from much practical experience in the concert hall.

Like Mozart, he too began to compose at an early age – in an endeavour to commit to paper his own improvisations on the clarinet – and as a composer, as a committed interpreter of the music of his colleagues, and as an established expert in musical Modernism, he is in a position to offer deep insights into the compositional qualities of a work that is so seemingly simple and 'Mozartian'.

Widmann’s fine text also postulates his reasons for choosing to couple Mozart’s concerto with one by a composer who was both literally and figuratively related to him, namely Carl Maria von Weber. His interpretation offers convincing justification for what is one of the few plausible programme combinations for Mozart’s work.

And finally, he also interpolates his own solo contribution, a work of his own composition, into the space between these two concertos, almost as if it were a cadenza. Widmann points out that while Mozart’s concerto is itself lacking a cadenza – which the unreflecting listener can easily overlook – he would never write one for it, despite receiving concrete requests to do so.

Weber’s Concerto was recorded in the studio on the Napelastrasse, as was Widmann’s own work.