The central impression of this evening at the “musica viva” in the Herkulessaal is how much the composer and conductor Jörg Widmann knows how to do with a large orchestra. In the best instrumental sense. In “Armonica”, the sounds of the glass harmonica (soloist Christa Schönfeldinger) float gently towards them, unite with the accordion, and are sprinkled with bright touches of the celesta. And such magnificently mixed developments in terms of sound color remain the core element of this piece with its wide-ranging intensity progressions.
Of course, you shouldn’t imagine the glass harmonica as a battery of singing wine glasses. A glass harmonica as a concert instrument consists of glass rings of different sizes that are mounted on one another, rotated with a foot mechanism and gently touched with moistened fingers. It looks like a horizontal glass kebab skewer on an old sewing machine. Schönfeldinger also plays Mozart’s lovely Adagio for glass harmonica KV 356/617a on it.
Widmann’s “Three Shadow Dances” also features soloists. Widmann sets up his clarinet at three stations and focuses on a moment of sound production, sometimes with an electric sound effect: carefully measured overblowing, trills, percussive key noise.
Spatiality also plays a role in Widmann’s “Towards Paradise (Labyrinth VI)” for trumpet and orchestra, in which soloist Håkan Hardenberger wanders through the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Hardenberger’s unpretentiousness and cultivated tone in entering the melodic web of relationships is magnificent. Widmann’s “Danse macabre” was more breakneck and wonderfully unleashed in its opulent tone poem. It is actually a dark dance of death. But the way the dance styles come together in it, the way a dissonant waltz virtuosically steps on its own toes, conveys unbridled musical joy in playing.