Carolin Widmann
Carolin Widmann (born 1976 in Munich) is a German classical violinist. She plays a violin from 1782 by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini. She studied with Igor Ozim in Cologne, Michèle Auclair in Boston and David Takeno in London.
As a soloist, she has worked with conductors such as Sir Roger Norrington, Sylvain Cambreling, Heinz Holliger, Riccardo Chailly, Sir Simon Rattle, Vladimir Jurowski, Daniel Harding and Esa-Pekka Salonen. Composers including Pierre Boulez, Peter Eötvös, Erkki-Sven Tüür, Wolfgang Rihm, Salvatore Sciarrino, Enno Poppe and Rebecca Saunders have written works for her.
Widmann has performed with major orchestras, such as the Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Since 2006 she has been Professor of Violin at the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig. From 2012 to 2015 she ran the Sommerliche Musiktage Hitzacker, Germany’s oldest chamber music festival.
In 2009, at the Salzburg Mozartwoche, she played Boulez chamber music with her brother Jörg Widmann and pianist Hideki Nagano. In 2012 she appeared in gefaltet, a choreographic concert by Sasha Waltz and Mark Andre, opening Mozartwoche. A 2012 recording of Schubert’s violin and piano works with Alexander Lonquich was well received. In 2014 at the Rheingau Musik Festival she performed with her brother and pianist Dénes Várjon.
From 2017 to 2024 she was on the board of trustees of the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung. In 2018 she premiered Jörg Widmann’s Violin Concerto No. 2 at Suntory Hall in Tokyo.
She often performs with her brother Jörg Widmann (clarinetist and composer) and with pianist Dénes Várjon.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 00:49 (CET).