Widmann's Trauermarsch and Mahler's Symphony No. 1

Hannes Minnaar plays Widmann's moving funeral march

In 2014 Jörg Widmann wrote Trauermarsch for piano and orchestra. It arose as an industrial accident. What should have been a four-movement piano concerto for Yefim Bronfman and the Berliner Philharmoniker became a one-movement piece based on the introduction, which also unexpectedly developed for Widmann into a colossal funeral march based on the descending second, which as a mourning motif, is sometimes explicit and sometimes hidden. Complete piece mastered. When you think of a funeral march, you think of Beethoven and Mahler – but perhaps not of the almost defenceless intimacy and sometimes touching tenderness of the solo part in this piece.

Ambiguity in Widmann and Mahler

Here too, it appears that you should never take titles at Widmann at their word. Above the piano part, already in bar one, a few bars before the orchestra starts 'solemnly and sternly': 'Laconic, somewhat hesitant.' In this way, Widmann immediately creates the ambiguity that characterizes Trauermarsch, a dialectical play of light and dark, vital and broken. Just as ironic as the funeral march in Mahler's First Symphony, which perfectly matches Widmann's masterpiece with its Vader-Jacob canon and its intimate, lyrical-melancholy atmosphere.