Carolin Widmann
“I would go as far as to say a sound is alive. I have to treat with the utmost love, otherwise I kill it. I have to let it speak. I always say you don’t create it, you let it happen, it’s already there. […] The instrument is our medium to find it, and to let it live.”
Carolin Widmann, born in Munich in 1976, is one of the most distinguished violinists of her generation, equally at home in contemporary works and the Romantic repertoire. Widmann studied with Igor Ozim in Cologne, Michèle Auclair in Boston and David Takeno in London and won several international prizes before her appointment as professor at Musikhochschule Leipzig in 2006.
Carolin Widman made her ECM debut in 2008 with a Gramophone Award-nominated recording of the Schumann violin sonatas, accompanied by Dénes Várjon. She said of these unjustly neglected pieces: “In Schumann the black [...]
“I would go as far as to say a sound is alive. I have to treat with the utmost love, otherwise I kill it. I have to let it speak. I always say you don’t create it, you let it happen, it’s already there. […] The instrument is our medium to find it, and to let it live.”
Carolin Widmann, born in Munich in 1976, is one of the most distinguished violinists of her generation, equally at home in contemporary works and the Romantic repertoire. Widmann studied with Igor Ozim in Cologne, Michèle Auclair in Boston and David Takeno in London and won several international prizes before her appointment as professor at Musikhochschule Leipzig in 2006.
Carolin Widman made her ECM debut in 2008 with a Gramophone Award-nominated recording of the Schumann violin sonatas, accompanied by Dénes Várjon. She said of these unjustly neglected pieces: “In Schumann the black dots on white paper never convey the full content of the music. Every note is different and every bar needs a new inflexion. You can do justice to this expressiveness only if you go to the limits and challenge routine wherever you can”. She followed this in 2009 with Phantasy of Spring, a recital of music by Feldman, Zimmermann, Schoenberg and Xenakis, which was also widely praised for its idiomatic understanding of demanding material.
In 2012 came an insightful Schubert recording, the first documentation of the musical alliance between Carolin Widmann and Alexander Lonquich, which has been gathering momentum since they first played Messiaen together in Salzburg in 2008.
ECM released her 2009 recording of Morton Feldman’s Violin and Orchestra in 2013, a work scored for huge orchestra which nonetheless relies on the subtlest gestures to make its impact. Says Widmann: “Sometimes when I listen to Feldman I’m unsure if a few minutes or half an eternity has passed… As a player, you have to immerse yourself in the Feldman cosmos”.
Widmann has performed as a soloist with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Orchestre National de France (Paris), the Orchestra di Santa Cecilia (Rome), the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich, RSO Vienna, the BBC Symphony Orchestra London, London Philharmonic Orchestra and the China Philharmonic in Beijing, and worked with conductors including Riccardo Chailly, Sir Roger Norrington, Silvain Cambreling, Vladimir Jurowski, Emanuel Krivine, Peter Eötvös and Heinz Holliger. In 2013 Carolin Widmann was named Artist of the Year at the International Classical Music Awards.
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