Clarinettist, composer and conductor; he studied clarinet with Gerd Starke in Munich and with Charles Neidich at the Juilliard School in New York. He performs regularly with renowned orchestras, such as the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Orchestre National de France, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Vienna Philharmonic, Netherlands Philharmonic, and Toronto Symphony Orchestra, under conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, Christoph Eschenbach, and Christoph von Dohnányi. He played the solo part in the world premiere of Mark Andre’s Clarinet Concerto at the Donaueschinger Musiktage 2015. Other clarinet concertos dedicated to and written for him include Wolfgang Rihm’s Musik für Klarinette und Orchester (1999) and Aribert Reimann’s Cantus (2006). He has performed chamber music with such well-known artists as András Schiff, Daniel Barenboim, Mitsuko Uchida, Tabea Zimmermann, Antoine Tamestit and the Hagen Quartet at the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg, Salzburg Festival, Carnegie Hall in New York, and Vienna’s Konzerthaus, amongst others. 

He also studied composition with Kay Westermann, Wilfried Hiller, and Wolfgang Rihm. His works have been performed under the baton of Daniel Barenboim, Daniel Harding, Valery Gergiev, Kent Nagano, Christian Thielemann, Mariss Jansons, Andris Nelsons, and Simon Rattle, and premiered by the leading orchestras such as the Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, BBC Symphony Orchestra, and many others. 

Widmann was an artist-in-residence at leading festivals such as Lucerne Festival and Salzburger Festspiele, as well as with orchestras: Bamberger Symphoniker, Zürich’s Tonhalle-Orchester (2015/16), BOZAR Brussels, and Elbphilharmonie Hamburg in its opening season. In the 2017/18 season he was featured as the first ever Composer-in-Residence in history of the Leipzig Gewandhaus. Widmann is a fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, a member of the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste, Freie Akademie der Künste Hamburg, Deutsche Akademie der Darstellenden Künste, and Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz. He is a professor in composition at the Barenboim-Said Academy, Berlin.