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Details
Southwark Cathedral
London Bridge
Southwark
London
SE1 9DA
England
Tickets
Prices: From £5
Book Tickets
Programme
Richard Wagner – The Flying Dutchman, WWV 63: Overture
Max Reger – Choral-Phantasie über 'Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott', Op.27
Maurice Ravel – Le Tombeau de Couperin: Menuet and Rigaudon
Franz Liszt – Mephisto Waltz no.1, S.514
Dezső Antalffy-Zsiross – Sportive Fauns (Scherzo after Arnold Boecklin)
Jean Roger-Ducasse – Pastorale
Performers
Martin Schmeding – organ
Other concerts in this Series (+)
Programme Note
Join us for a summer of organ music as we host five organ recitals on the renowned T.C Lewis organ of Southwark Cathedral
This recital forms part of the Southwark Cathedral Summer Organ Festival 2026, a month-long celebration of organ music featuring distinguished performers from across the UK and Europe. Each concert also includes a Q&A hosted by a guest interviewer.
Biography:
Martin Schmeding, born in 1975 in Minden, Westphalia, studied church music, music education, recorder (concert diploma) and organ (concert diploma), conducting, harpsichord, and music theory in Hanover, Amsterdam, and Düsseldorf. His teachers included Ulrich Bremsteller, Lajos Rovatkay, Dr. Hans van Nieuwkoop, Jacques van Oortmerssen, and Jean Boyer. During his studies, he was a scholarship recipient of the German National Academic Foundation.
After winning eight first prizes at the national "Jugend musiziert" competition, he became a prize winner at, among others, the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Competition in Berlin, the Pachelbel Competition in Nuremberg, the Ritter Competition in Magdeburg, the Böhm Competition in Lüneburg, the Hanover/Mannheim University Competition, the German Music Competition in Berlin, the European Competition of Young Organists in Ljubljana, and the Musica Antiqua Competition in Bruges. In 1999, he was a finalist in the ARD Competition in Munich. He also received numerous other scholarships and grants. In 1999, he was awarded the Lower Saxony Cultural Advancement Prize.
From 1997 to 1999, he was cantor and organist of the Nazareth Church in Hanover. He then served at two of the most important centers of church music in Germany: in 1999, he succeeded Prof. Oskar Gottlieb Blarr as cantor and organist at the Neander Church in Düsseldorf. From 2002 to 2004, Martin Schmeding held the position of organist at the Dresden Kreuzkirche, a church with a tradition spanning over 700 years. Furthermore, from 2012 to 2016, he was titular organist of St. Ludwig's Church in Freiburg and director of the chamber choir of the former South Baden Regional Cantorate.
After teaching positions in Hanover, Leipzig, Weimar, and Dresden, he was Professor of Organ at the Freiburg University of Music from 2004 to 2015, succeeding Professor Zsigmond Szathmáry. There, he also headed the Institute for Church Music, which he initiated and which was founded in October 2012. From 2014 to 2016, he held a visiting professorship at the Lucerne University of Music, Drama and Media (Switzerland). In the fall of 2015, he assumed the Chair of Organ Literature at the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy University of Music and Theatre Leipzig, a position combined with the directorship of the European Organ Academy—one of the most prestigious posts in his field. Since 2018, he has also served as a Visiting Guest Professor at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. Students from his organ class have won prizes at numerous international competitions and hold prominent positions in churches and universities.
Numerous recordings for television, radio, and CD exist (including the complete organ works of J. Brahms, F. Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Max Reger, and F. Schmidt; the first recording of Robert Schumann's works for pedal piano on an original instrument; and the organ version of J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations). His artistic profile is further enhanced by score editions and publications in books and journals (including Butz, Carus, Herder, Schott, and edition text+kritik), concerts as a soloist, chamber musician, and with orchestras both in Germany and abroad (Europe, Asia, and America) and at festivals (including the Leipzig Bach Festival, the Thuringian Bach Weeks, the Braunschweig Chamber Music Podium, the Merseburg Organ Days, the Lower Saxony Music and Organ Days, the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, and the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival), teaching at national and international masterclasses, and work as a competition juror, conductor, and composer.
In 2009, 2017, and 2020, he was awarded the German Record Critics' Prize (Best List). With his recording of "JS Bach: Goldberg Variations (Organ Version)," Martin Schmeding received one of the most prestigious international music awards, the "Echo Klassik 2010" as Instrumentalist of the Year.
In 2017, he was selected from over 2,000 nominees at 250 German universities and named Professor of the Year (Humanities and Cultural Studies) by the UNICUM Foundation (under the patronage of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research). He received his doctorate (Dr. phil., summa cum laude) in 2021 from the Carl Maria von Weber University of Music Dresden (Prof. Dr. Michael Heinemann) with a dissertation on the organ and early works of Wolfgang Rihm.
