Wolfgang Sieber

Wolfgang Sieber was born into a family of musicians from Lichtensteig, close to the ‘birth place’ of more than one-hundred ‘Toggenburger Hausorgeln’; from the age of fourteen, he has been a performing organist. Following the completion of his school education, Wolfgang Schreiber received his piano, organ, and church music training with Hans Vollenweider at Zurich, Jirí Reiberger at Prague, Gaston Litaize and Jean Langlais at Paris, Franz Lehrndorfer at Munich, and many more. Sieber’s work as a soloist and accompanist, repetiteur, and ensemble partner encompasses classical, world music, and traditional/folk music repertoires, as well as jazz and cabaret acts. As a result of these contrasts in programme, style, and setting—CD productions with the Guuggenmusig Wäsmalichatze Lucerne, or the vocal ensemble Corund, for example—he is able to generate thematically appropriate connections for various people, occasions, instruments, spaces, and places. His CD-series ‘The Symphonic Organ’ is dedicated to the prominent organ works by Franck, Reger, and Messiaen. As church musician at the collegiate parish church of St Leodegar im Hof at Lucerne, Wolfgang Sieber attends to a diverse range of musical duties. As collegiate organist, he has access to the historically restored Walpen-Organ and the Great Hoforgan, Switzerland’s most stylistically multifaceted instrument: thanks to Sieber’s initiative, the organ’s historic pipes which were put out of use in 1972 are set to return to the ‘organ landscape of the Hofkirche’. Wolfgang Sieber was awarded the ‘Kunst- und Kulturpreis’ by the city of Lucerne and received the ‘Goldener Violinschlüssel’, the highest award in the domain of Swiss folk music.Concert engagements have seen Wolfgang Sieber perform at Berlin, Lucerne’s KKL, Japan, the rural regions of the Alps, as well as at César Franck’s artistic homestead, Sainte-Clotilde in Paris. In addition to his activities as performer and composer, Sieber teaches children and adolescents, coaches classes of concert musicians, supports young musicians, sets up composer workshops, concert series, and events to promote the 350-year-old Lucerne Hoforgan; he also initiates premiere performances, and is active as an adjudicator, examiner, and organ advisor. www.sieberspace.ch