Perhaps the most salient feature of Jörg Widmann’s music is his conscious acceptance of impulses from tradition. He has a penchant for the emotional urgency of Romanticism, as manifest in the expressive moods he draws on and the tonal elements and traditional compositional devices he employs. Over the years this has given rise to a distinctive personal style with a marked urge toward expressivity. He revitalises culturally meaningful elements from the past, whether playfully and directly in his earlier music, or more deeply thought-out with greater technical sophistication in his recent works.