AMARCORD, WIDMANN AND THE MKO

To Richard Wagner, Beethoven’s ‘Seventh’ is a ‘work of art of the future’. In 1849, he calls the ‘blissful dancers’ he sees while listening to it ‘people of the future’. This future, he says, is the vision of a united humanity emerging in the joyous chorus of the later ‘Ninth’. Jörg Widmann drew inspiration for his own reflection ‘Con brio’ from Mariss Jansons, who premiered this work in Munich in 2008. Widmann’s concert overture also refers to Beethoven’s ‘Eighth’, which was composed at the same time as the ‘Seventh’. Widmann not only follows the instrumentation of these symphonies, but above all captures ‘furor and rhythmic urge’ in order to translate them into his own tonal language. The deep abysses that lie within comedy and light-footed naivety were demonstrated brilliantly by Widmann himself six years ago in his piece ‘Kinderreime und Nonsensverse’ (Children’s Rhymes and Nonsense Verses) – the re-performance under the direction of the composer completes the programme celebrating Widmann’s 50th birthday.