Artists’ voices

“Incredible, this experience – I listened to our Elias file open-mouthed!

The depth and warmth of sound that Dolby Atmos makes possible, together with maximum transparency, is simply magnificent – quite plainly the future of audio engineering!”

Jörg-Hannes Hahn, conductor and organist (photo: Björn Klein)

“I still remember well the first time Ingo Schmidt-Lucas played me a Dolby Atmos production in his studio. The clarity, the wealth of colour and the vitality with which the organ had been captured were overwhelming.

Ingo’s productions have always been marked by an exceptional sound quality and by great musical sensitivity in the editing. All the more impressive, then, to hear how the Dolby Atmos format turns this into an even more intense and more spatial listening experience.

I wish him continued success in his future productions and look forward very much to the recordings we will make together.”

Wolfgang Kogert, organist (photo: Lukas Beck)

“Listening to the music became a feast for the senses. Here technical means make the beauty of the music tangible in a very particular way.

A directness arises that leaves you feeling the violinist is standing right beside you. As you sink into it, images, colours and new horizons appear; feelings and thoughts are set in motion.

It is not a technology buff who has set out here, but a person who is a musician through and through!”

Felicia Friedrich, singer and choral conductor (photo: Ansgar van Treeck)

“Working intensively with Ingo Schmidt-Lucas for Cybele on the tango project closest to my heart, hearing it in Dolby Atmos for the first time and then shaping the sound with such care was a very special experience for me.

Sinking spatially into the quietest, most intimate, improvisatory and striking moments of sound, paired with Ingo’s instinct and his ability to draw the utmost from an already first-rate recording, is impressive.

This combination of artistic vision, musical sensitivity and innovative recording technique makes the experience unique for me.”

Susanne Hofmann, violinist (photo: Tommi Riedel)

“Dear Mr Schmidt-Lucas, many thanks for the splendid work so far. I believe you really are on a very interesting path with the 3D dummy-head sound – perhaps we can use it on another project. Like you, I miss in conventional stereo recording the honesty and the acoustic perspectives that your 3D binaural stereo sound makes possible. I find the whole project fascinating.”

Simone Young, conductor (AUSTRALIA)

“Dear Mr Schmidt-Lucas, the 3D binaural sound of your Reger organ recording is a truly impressive listening experience! Incredibly spatial – you think you are there in the church.”

Fritz Siebert, harpsichordist

“When I heard my own recordings over Ingo Schmidt-Lucas’ equalised STAX system, an entirely new dimension of musical listening opened up to me – a world that is rarely to be experienced even under perfect live conditions. Switching between equalised and unequalised sound made immediately audible how much the equalisation improves the inherently less than perfectly linear response of the headphones.
Suddenly I found myself inside my own music, in a completely three-dimensional, almost spherical acoustic space – as though every molecule of this music could be perceived in its fineness. And yet nothing fell apart into detail: everything remained perceptible as a whole, an immediate immersion in the character and soul of one’s own recording.
For studio and location work a system like this is the last word in fidelity – not only at the mixing stage, but already at the soundcheck, where it allows reliable judgements about the actual sound picture and makes acoustic decisions possible before the recording begins.”

Wulfin Lieske, guitarist and composer

“Do you know that slight shock, that sense of strangeness, that comes over you when you hear your own voice from tape? Something similar often happens to performing musicians when they hear a recording of their own interpretation – and the performer is not always to blame! A pleasant shock, by contrast, came over me when I listened to a recording of piano works by Juan Allende-Blin that I had made for the label CYBELE. The recording had not only succeeded superbly in technical terms, it did not merely render the works ‘objectively’; a peculiar radiance emanated from it that was not apparent to me alone, a certain something that for me is a kind of hallmark of CYBELE. Certainly, the new SACD surround recording process adds a whole dimension of transparency and spatiality to reproduced music, the instrument was of the first rank, the repertoire had been well prepared and so on – yet there was more to it. The artistic approach, the Tonmeister Ingo Schmidt-Lucas’ feeling for complex and far from everyday musical structures, his alertness and imagination, which were able to create a relaxed yet concentrated and inspired atmosphere during the sessions, I found extraordinary and impressive. It was as if he managed at once to make the performer’s artistic ideas more vivid and to give them concrete shape. Together with his technical skill this led to a result capable of fascinating even listeners unversed in new music. I look forward to further projects together.”

Thomas Günther, pianist

“My dear Ingo, It was really a joy to meet you and work together. Your manner to ‘make music’, to ‘take’ the sound, alive, ‘chaleureux’ with the complete energy of the sonorities, of the polyphony is exceptional and give a marvelous result. I’m impatient now to listen and I hope that Mahler will be happy too ! -:). It was a beautiful way to make music.”

Daniel Kawka, conductor (France)

“Ingo Schmidt-Lucas and his label Cybele: highly professional in their work, critical, demanding, and at the same time enthusiastic and inspiring in their commitment to a repertoire beyond the norm. Could one wish for anything better?”

Bernhard Kontarsky, conductor and pianist

“Dear DoelenKwartet, my great, warm and heartfelt thanks! For the wonderful recordings. I think they are outstanding, in their acoustic picture too. Your interpretations are palpably carried and buoyed by love and passion for this music. I am very happy about that.”

Wolfgang Rihm, composer

“I thank you for the copies of the Prinzessin SACD you sent me – they have brought enjoyment and appreciation to all the friends who received them! So, thank you and keep up the good work. With best wishes, Nuria Schoenberg Nono”

Nuria Schoenberg-Nono, music educator and president of the Fondazione Archivio Luigi Nono (Italy)

“How lovely when a young label manager says he wants to record my works because he has heard my music and likes it! Very rarely have I attended a recording at which the so-called Tonmeister, the orchestral score in front of him, hears the mistakes of the performing musicians himself before the composer has said a word. The great care taken over every detail of the booklet and of the cover presentation is wonderful too.”

Jacqueline Fontyn, Belgian composer (Belgium)

“Recording the complete organ works of Juan Allende-Blin was the first time I worked as a performer for CYBELE. I already knew the label from recordings of high technical and artistic rank. During the sessions with Ingo Schmidt-Lucas an atmosphere arose so favourable, so stimulating and so purposefully concentrated that these works – difficult not only in playing technique but also extremely risky in instrumental and recording terms – came off perfectly. The recordings are intensely communicative, at times even at the threshold of perception, where sounds fade, dwindle and turn to noise. I am delighted that these pieces, some of which I have been playing for thirty or forty years, could finally be documented so accurately and to such a high standard.”

Gerd Zacher, organist and composer

“For some years now the name CYBELE has stood for bold and innovative label work, and in a short time this label has rightly made a worldwide name for itself among connoisseurs and lovers of recordings and CD (or SACD) releases produced with the utmost care. Among the roughly eighty publications so far there are discoveries to be made spanning every period of music. Many of them are works made accessible to the interested listener here for the first time, and in exemplary recordings. I am glad that a small but not insignificant part of my own works is now available on CYBELE in first recordings. Since I was present at all the productions – often as a performing musician too – I was able to witness at first hand the musical enthusiasm and, at the same time, the technical know-how and skill with which the best possible solutions for a recording are always sought. At CYBELE it is about the thing itself, about the music, and not primarily about profit. The success and the thoroughly positive response in the international press have come about through quality, which cannot be measured by sales figures alone.”

Michael Denhoff, composer

“My first contact with Ingo Schmidt-Lucas and CYBELE came at the beginning of the nineties, when as a member of the Trio Diritto I recorded a work by Stefan Thomas with him. The collaboration continued a little later with the production of three CDs of works for recorder and harpsichord, which placed well-known pieces by Bach and Handel, Couperin or Corelli in the context of lesser-known works of the time, thus throwing new light on the recorder repertoire and opening up new listening experiences. Ingo Schmidt-Lucas was of great conceptual importance here: right at the start he proposed producing three CDs instead of one, so as to allow an artistically adequate presentation; he was decisive in securing funding through a grant application, and he supported the project with unflagging commitment over the years its planning and execution required. This collaboration was and is important for my artistic career, and I hope it will continue for many years to come! With the courage to pursue a new repertoire policy that also gives interesting programme concepts a chance, CYBELE has already secured itself a leading position among labels whose programming grows ever paler and more monochrome. The recordings released on CYBELE, and others I have made with Ingo Schmidt-Lucas as Tonmeister – for Bayerischer Rundfunk, for instance – are the ones I still like best in retrospect, even years later on re-listening: he understood how to feel his way into the sound of the recorder so completely that here I hear my instrument as I love it, and my shortcomings as a performer trouble me less than on other recordings with other Tonmeisters. In the shared work of listening to a basic setup for a recording he is able to respond to suggestions formulated in ‘musicians’ language’ in such a way that one goes into the next takes reassured. More than once, during the ‘flat patches’ of a seven-hour recording day, his suggestions for pointed musical shaping gave me the decisive motivation not to throw in the towel … he operates his recording equipment as a virtuoso plays his instrument, and is a reassuringly equal partner in shaping the sound of the CD we make together.”

Jeremias Schwarzer, recorder player

“I have made music since my earliest childhood. After my school-leaving examinations I also studied mathematics and architecture for several semesters. That study led me to realise that a stringent relationship exists between sound and space. In topology I learned how volumes can transform in space and in time. My music has been shaped in essential ways by such ideas. When Ingo Schmidt-Lucas recorded first my piano works and later my organ works, I noticed how sensitively and how rightly he had understood my intentions and was able to realise them through the new technology of the Super Audio Compact Disc. For these recordings render the living acoustic space I had always wished for.”

Juan Allende-Blin, composer

“The collaboration with Ingo Schmidt-Lucas was of top quality, both in the recording studio and in the execution. I really did find my CD everywhere: in Berlin, Paris and London.”

Peter-Jan Wagemans, composer (Netherlands)

“What I value in Ingo Schmidt-Lucas’ way of working is the very precise recording work, down to the last detail, in a pleasant atmosphere. His swift process from production to the release of the CD is a great exception these days, so that the artist’s work reaches the public soon and reflects a current picture. The sound and the presentation of the product are innovative, contemporary and very attractive.”

Birgitta Wollenweber, pianist

“What impressed me above all was the seriousness of the team at CYBELE RECORDS. They asked for scores, and they discussed the works, the interpretation and the reach of what they say in a differentiated and intensive way among themselves and with me. At CYBELE it seems to me that on every level – works, interpretation, recording and presentation – the highest quality is the one and only concern. For me as a composer that is the best basis for a good and lasting artistic and business partnership, not least because CYBELE itself is forward-looking in both repertoire and recording technique.”

Sidney Corbett, composer

“Our collaboration with CYBELE’s Tonmeister Ingo Schmidt-Lucas was marked by perfection, humour and flexibility. The overriding aim was always to achieve a truly outstanding result. A largely stress-free, collegial atmosphere on the recording days – which when necessary ran deep into the night – helped in this. Thanks to the sharp ears of the Tonmeister, who always voiced his criticism kindly but firmly, I myself and all of us in the ensemble learned a great deal. Looking forward to further projects together.”

Ulrike Stortz, violinist, Ensemble gelberklang

“From the very first hearing of the cello concertos by Schoenberg and Monn I was captured by a skilfully rendered, intensely alive and colourful world of sound. The balance, carried by the idea of an equal dialogue between solo cello and orchestra, and the substance of the solo cello – brilliant yet supple and never harsh in the high register, tartly speaking and yet warm and full in the middle, gnarled and full of character in the depths – convinced me at once. The ability to convey a musical message and statement through a recording is remarkable; it not only proves the great skill of Cybele Records and Ingo Schmidt-Lucas but also documents the unusual passion with which they both work.”

Hans-Christian Schwarz, cellist

“CYBELE – does that have anything to do with cybernetics? No, it is the name of a Greek goddess (though originally from Asia Minor), and Greece has become a second home to me in the course of my career. A label with that name appeals to me! CYBELE appealed to me, personified by Ingo Schmidt-Lucas, in 1995. Many years of most gratifying and productive collaboration have passed since. Highly committed and thoroughly professional, artistically and in recent years increasingly in technical matters too, and of course cybernetically well attuned in organisational ones. So many talents are drawn in and support the label’s development. Do I hear cymbala sounding? O great mother … My best wishes go with CYBELE, the label bearing the Latinised name of the Greek tutelary goddess of culture.”

Günther Becker, composer (Bad Lippspringe)

“What I particularly like is that CYBELE puts high quality first.”

Willem Tanke, organist and composer (Netherlands)

“CYBELE is a stroke of luck for any composer and stands for a REPERTOIRE with an unmistakable profile (far from the marketable jumble), for a high SOUND QUALITY using the latest TECHNOLOGY, with a LAYOUT whose individual textual and graphic design can hold its own anywhere.”

Wolfgang Hufschmidt, composer

“In my personal meetings with the people behind the CYBELE label I have been able to see for myself the enthusiasm and the extraordinary care of everyone involved, artistically and in recording technique. CYBELE does not follow fashions or short-lived trends; purely commercial tactics play no part. Decisions about productions are taken on purely artistic and factual criteria. In this CYBELE benefits from the competence of its staff, all of whom are themselves active as musicians, Tonmeisters or composers. The new Super Audio CD process is the ideal medium precisely for presenting contemporary music – for today’s music stretches dynamic, sonic and spatial possibilities to their limits. At a demonstration of the new medium I was positively taken aback by the glaring difference from the conventional CD, which by comparison sounds flat and pale even with the most modern recording methods. The differences show themselves not only in works for larger forces but, astonishingly, quite as clearly in solo works (piano music, for example).”

Christoph Maria Wagner, composer and pianist

“Dear Ingo, it is time to thank you for the work on ‘our’ SACD. The result is splendid, the response to the copies I have sold outstanding, and after our first CD – which was excellent ten years ago! – we have achieved a great step up. I do not want to leave unmentioned that your patience, confidence and competence in the recording situation contributed fundamentally to all of this. This microcosm of contemporary music has thereby been given a splendid garment. And the presentation too, that is to say the look of all the CYBELE releases, is in its consistency artistically apt. I am already looking forward to a new project! – we shall see …….”

Bernd Wiesemann, composer, performance artist and toy pianist

“Dear Mr Schmidt-Lucas, when I add up how much of my music is available on CYBELE, counting the planned orchestral CD, I arrive at 176:35 – almost three hours. Or, if you include the intervals, a good three concerts. And concerts with highly varied programmes at that: a radio piece, a guitar recital, an orchestral concert with soloists, and somewhere in between a piece for three electronically managed recorders. In sheer quantity of music that is considerably more than has appeared on any other label of mine, almost a small compendium of ‘collected works’, ten pieces. Well, if that cannot be called good collaboration!”

Rolf Riehm, composer

“All four CYBELE CDs I have played on so far were praised especially for their outstanding sound quality – praise for Ingo Schmidt-Lucas, the founder of CYBELE, whom I hold in particularly high regard as a Tonmeister in general. Ingo’s particular powers of perception, not only for sound quality but also for musical content and context, have always made the recording work a pleasure and have decisively shaped the results.”

Scott Roller, cellist and composer, Ensemble >gelberklang<

“The collaboration during the SACD production with the label Cybele Records and its producer Ingo Schmidt-Lucas was prepared and carried out professionally. The result for the two recorded works ‘In unum Deum’ and ‘Credo’ by the composer Michael Denhoff is extremely satisfying, both in the recording quality of the spatial balance and in the sound quality of this hybrid Super Audio innovation, which reaches undreamt-of dimensions. I am very glad to have got to know Ingo Schmidt-Lucas and hope for many more CD productions together.”

Steffen Schreyer, conductor

“… what a wonderful surprise. First of all there is the splendid outward design [of the audiobook], which is most appealing, and (…) the booklet too is substantial and extremely informative. I then listened into it in the evening, and there as well: great compliments are due, first to the direction – the interleaving of music and text (about which I was very curious) is an excellently judged rhythm that grips and carries you along. I very much liked the voices too: the narrator has that assured, calm storytelling tone; and then your voice [Mirjam Wiesemann], which conveys so much of this female figure (important to me) to the listener and awakens their curiosity early on; I was glad every time it returned. (…) With the audiobook I perceive my novel anew. In short, I am delighted, I am enthusiastic, and I thank you for your careful, exemplary work. I shall of course recommend the book wherever I can.”

Urs Faes, author (Switzerland)