Max Reger

* 19 March 1873 in Brand (Upper Palatinate), died on 11 May 1916 in Leipzig; German composer, organist, pianist and conductor; he grew up in Weiden in the Upper Palatinate, where he received piano and organ lessons at an early age. From 1890 he studied with the music theorist Hugo Riemann at the conservatoire in Wiesbaden and afterwards taught there himself. In 1901 he moved to Munich, where from 1905 to 1906 he taught at the Akademie der Tonkunst as successor to Joseph Rheinberger; after disagreements with the faculty he gave up the post. In 1907 he was called to Leipzig as university music director and professor at the Königliches Konservatorium. From 1911 until the beginning of 1914 he directed the Meininger Hofkapelle as court Kapellmeister. In 1915 he moved to Jena and continued to travel to Leipzig every week to teach. His output comprises organ music, chamber music, piano and orchestral works, choral works and some three hundred songs with piano accompaniment. In the Cybele catalogue his music is represented on nineteen albums. At its heart lies the Max Reger Edition with Martin Schmeding, who recorded Reger’s complete organ works in 2015 and 2016 on historic Sauer, Walcker, Ladegast and Eule organs, among them the St. Petri Dom in Bremen, the Lutherkirche Wiesbaden, the Erlöserkirche Bad Homburg, St. Annen Annaberg-Buchholz, the Evangelische Kirche Essen-Werden, the Lutherkirche Chemnitz, the Berliner Dom and the Michaeliskirche, the Nikolaikirche and the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. In 2006 Willem Tanke placed two Wind Fantasies of his own beside Reger’s Variations and Fugue in F sharp minor, played on the Adema organ of St. Bavo’s Cathedral in Haarlem and on two Marcussen organs of the Grote of Sint-Laurenskerk in Rotterdam. On the album Recital: Annette-Barbara Vogel (2002) his chamber music stands beside works by Johannes Brahms, George Enescu and Witold Lutoslawski, played by Annette-Barbara Vogel (violin) and Ulrich Hofmann (piano).