In the Maze – The Musician Jörg Widmann

The film accompanies Jörg Widmann on his mazelike journey through the various psychological and sonic zones of a compositional commission.

The music takes on a life of its own in the moment of writing, according to Jörg Widmann. It slips, as it were, into its own body and becomes a living being that goes its own way. Thus, it remains a fragment, because it is not what he had intended.

For Jörg Widmann, the labyrinth is an image that describes this state. It has become his life's theme, which he has meanwhile also processed musically in six pieces. In a labyrinth one gets lost, there are moments "where it doesn't go any further. And that is something that I often experience as problematic and very painful in composing. As happy as composing is."

The film accompanies Jörg Widmann in the composition of his trumpet concerto "Towards Paradise" (Labyrinth VI), commissioned by the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig and the Boston Symphony Orchestra - from the first drafts to the premiere. We see him at the Salzburg Festival, in the Boulez Hall and Konzerthaus Berlin, experience the universal musician together with Daniel Barenboim, with Anne Sophie Mutter, for whom he composed his 6th string quartet, and on a Taiwan tour with his sister, violinist Carolin Widmann. We discover him behind and on stage and realize that it is a whole bundle of entangled threads within him, whereby the composer without the clarinetist, the conductor without the composer, Jörg Widmann without the human being is unthinkable.

Original title Im Labyrinth – Der Musiker Jörg Widmann
Duration 52 minutes
Director Holger Preuße
Producer Stefan Pannen
Executive Producer Theresa-Martina März
Production year 2022
Production Company BR/ARTE, sounding images