A native of Munich, Carolin Widmann studied with Igor Ozim in Cologne, Michèle Auclair in Boston and David Takeno in London. She regularly appears as a guest artist at such widely known festivals as Lucerne, Schleswig-Holstein and Salzburg, as well as performing at the Enescu Festival in Bucharest, at the Festival D’Automne in Paris and at the chamber music festivals in Lockenhaus, Heimbach and Jerusalem.
She has performed as a soloist with the Gewandhaus-Orchester Leipzig, Orchestre National de France (Paris), the Orchestra di Santa Cecilia (Rome), the Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich, RSO Vienna, the BBC Symphony Orchestra London, London Philharmonic Orchestra and the China Philharmonic in Beijing, collaborating with conductors Riccardo Chailly, Sir Roger Norrington, Silvain Cambreling, Vladimir Jurowski, Emanuel Krivine, Peter Eötvös and Heinz Holliger. In the 2011/2012 season Carolin Widmann performed the world première of the violin concerto “still” by Rebecca Saunders with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sylvain Cambreling at the Beethoven-Festival in Bonn. In addition, she premièred the choreographic concerto “gefaltet” (working title) by the renowned choreographer Sasha Waltz and composer Mark André in collaboration with Alexander Lonquich (piano) and Nicolas Altstaedt (cello) at the Mozartwoche 2012 in Salzburg. Further performances of this project will take place in Berlin, Zurich and Luxembourg.
Carolin Widmann’s debut CD “Reflections I” was named the Critics’ Choice for 2006 by the German Record Critics’ Award. Her first CD at the ECM label with the Schumann Sonatas and the pianist Dénes Várjon was released in September 2008. In fall 2009, her CD “Phantasy of Spring” with works by Feldman, Zimmermann, Schönberg und Xenakis was awarded with the diapason d’or as well as with the German Record Critics’ Award 2010 in the chamber music category. In 2012, a recording of the Feldman violin concerto as well as a new CD with pieces by Franz Schubert which she recorded in collaboration with the pianist Alexander Lonquich will be released by ECM records.
Beyond her work as a soloist, Carolin Widmann has been a professor for violin on the faculty of the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy conservatory in Leipzig since October of 2006. She is artistic director of Germany’s oldest chamber music festival, the Sommerliche Musiktage Hitzacker. Carolin Widmann plays a G.B. Guadagnini violin from 1782.