Stuttgarter Kammerorchester & Jörg Widmann
Biography Stuttgarter Kammerorchester & Jörg Widmann
The Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra (SKO)
Founded in 1945 by Karl Münchinger, it has developed a distinctive sound culture since its inception, becoming a model for many subsequent ensembles. Under Dennis Russell Davies, the SKO's Conductor Laureate, the orchestra deliberately opened itself up to contemporary music. With his successor, Michael Hofstetter, the ensemble developed further expertise in the field of historical performance practice.
Today, 75 years after its founding, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra represents the inspiring combination of tradition and pioneering spirit. The SKO maintains close ties to Stuttgart and its home region through concerts, collaborations, and projects, and as a musical ambassador, it delights audiences around the world on tours and guest performances. Its extensive discography, featuring top-class soloists and hand-picked programs, testifies to the ensemble's international renown.
The principal conductor is the internationally acclaimed violinist and conductor Thomas Zehetmair. The orchestra's artistic partner is the renowned composer, conductor, and clarinetist Jörg Widmann. Together, as the leading musical duo, they bring new impetus to the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra's interpretation of its broad repertoire, from the early Baroque to the 21st century, and also appear as soloists. The orchestra presents itself both as "SKO pur" (pure SKO) in its regular lineup of 17 strings and in a symphonic configuration. For 2021, top-class artists such as Heinz Holliger, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Arabella Steinbacher, and Kristian Bezuidenhout have been secured as guests. Guest performances in leading concert halls, including the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Tonhalle Zurich, and the Konzerthaus Vienna, are also on the program.
In "Sternstunden," the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra's own concert series, genre boundaries are enthusiastically crossed and programmatic experiments are dared. Stravinsky's ballet music "Apollon Musagète" is combined with works and dance choreographies from the time of Louis XIV. Nirvana meets Purcell. The premieres of two commissioned works by Adriana Hölszky and jazz violinist Adam Bałdych are also among the highlights of 2021.
In the constantly evolving field of digitalization, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra is constantly discovering new creative fields. Since 2018, innovative projects involving virtual reality, music games, and hologram concerts have been created here, expanding the orchestra's classical foundation and offering audiences new artistic experiences.
With its music education program "SKOhr-Labor," the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra has been developing participatory formats for children and young people from diverse backgrounds since 2015. Through customized projects, the SKO assumes social responsibility and paves the way for the future. At the end of 2021, for example, a "prison opera" with juvenile offenders from the Adelsheim Prison is scheduled, for which the SKO won the "The Power of the Arts" award from Philip Morris GmbH.
The Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra is supported by the State of Baden-Württemberg, the City of Stuttgart, and Robert Bosch GmbH, as well as numerous project sponsors, patrons, and donors.
Jörg Widmann
is one of the most exciting and versatile artists of his generation. Trained by Gerd Starke in Munich and Charles Neidich at the Juilliard School in New York, clarinetist Jörg Widmann is a regular guest with major international orchestras, such as the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig, where he is the first Gewandhaus Composer this season, the Orchestre National de France, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, and the National Symphony Orchestra Washington, and performs with conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, Valery Gergiev, Kent Nagano, Sylvain Cambreling, Christoph Eschenbach, and Christoph von Dohnanyi.
As part of the 2015 Donaueschinger Musiktage, he premiered the new clarinet concerto by Mark Andre. Several clarinet concertos by composers such as Wolfgang Rihm and Aribert Reimann are dedicated to him and have been premiered by him.
Jörg Widmann studied composition with Kay Westermann, Wilfried Hiller, and Wolfgang Rihm. His work has received numerous awards.
Conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, Daniel Harding, Kent Nagano, Christian Thielemann, Mariss Jansons, Andris Nelsons, and Simon Rattle regularly perform his music. Orchestras such as the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, and many others have premiered his music and regularly include it in their concert repertoire. Since his tenure as a Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer Fellow, he has enjoyed a special artistic collaboration with the Cleveland Orchestra and its chief conductor, Franz Welser-Möst. Under the direction of Kent Nagano and featuring renowned singers, the premiere of his opera "Babylon" opened the 2012/13 season at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. The Alte Oper Frankfurt dedicated its composer portrait "Auftakt" to him that same season.
In 2009, the musical theater piece "Am Anfang" by Anselm Kiefer and Jörg Widmann premiered to mark the 20th anniversary of the Opéra Bastille in Paris. Widmann acted as composer, clarinetist, and made his conducting debut.
Jörg Widmann has been artist in residence at numerous orchestras and festivals, including the Lucerne and Grafenegg Festivals, the Bamberg Symphony, and, in the 2015/16 season, the creative chair of the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich. The Vienna Konzerthaus, the Alte Oper Frankfurt, and the Cologne Philharmonic have dedicated composer portraits to Widmann in recent years – at Carnegie Hall in New York, his music was the focus of a season under the motto "Making Music: Jörg Widmann."
Widmann is a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin and a full member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, the Free Academy of Arts Hamburg (2007), the German Academy of Performing Arts (2007), and the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz (2016).
