Martin Schmeding

* 1975 in Minden; organist and music teacher; studied church music, organ and conducting in Hanover, Amsterdam and Düsseldorf; prizewinner at the ARD-Wettbewerb München; organist of the Kreuzkirche Dresden (2002–2004); since 2015 professor of organ at the HfMT Leipzig. His teachers included Ulrich Bremsteller and Lajos Rovatkay in Hanover, Jacques van Oortmerssen and Hans van Nieuwkoop in Amsterdam, and Jean Boyer; in 1999 he was a finalist at the ARD-Musikwettbewerb München. From 1999 to 2002 he was cantor and organist at the Neanderkirche Düsseldorf, and since 2004 he has been professor at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg and titular organist of the Ludwigskirche there. His repertoire ranges from Bach through the organ music of the Romantic era to the music of the present day; besides Reger he has recorded the complete organ works of Brahms, Mendelssohn and Franz Schmidt. His association with Cybele, which began in 2008, is the longest the label has: thirty-two releases. At its heart lies the Max Reger Edition, Reger’s Complete Organ Works in seventeen volumes (2015/16), recorded on historic Sauer, Walcker, Ladegast and Eule organs in Bremen, Wiesbaden, Bad Homburg, Annaberg-Buchholz, Essen-Werden, Chemnitz, in the Berliner Dom and on three Leipzig instruments; the series was nominated for the International Classical Music Awards. It was followed by the six-volume Mallorca Edition Historic Organs (2017), which appeared on the Bestenliste 3/2017 of the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik. For the Goldberg Variations on the historic Gottfried Silbermann organ of the Dresden Hofkirche (2009) he received the ECHO Klassik 2010 as instrumentalist of the year; the Tilo Medek recording on the Sauer organ of the Auferstehungskirche Düsseldorf-Oberkassel (2008) reached the Bestenliste 2/2009. There are also albums of organ works by Günther Becker (2009, with Christian Roderburg), Oskar Gottlieb Blarr (2017) and Zsigmond Szathmary (2019), the conversation volume Wolfgang Rihm and the Organ from the Edition Künstler im Gespräch, and several of the label’s audiobook productions. On Jacqueline Fontyn and the Concerto (2014), also from the Edition Künstler im Gespräch, he plays the double concerto “Es ist ein Ozean…” for flute, harpsichord and strings with Gaby Pas-Van Riet. Recording Producer of all recordings: Ingo Schmidt-Lucas.