Biography
Konstantin Reymaier serves as Cathedral Organist at Vienna’s St. Stephen’s Cathedral while also holding ordination as a Catholic priest. Born in the Styrian town of Wagna on May 8, 1967, he pursued dual studies at Vienna’s University of Music and Performing Arts, where his organ instructors were first Rudolf Scholz and later Alfred Mitterhofer, and simultaneously completed a theology degree at the University of Vienna. In 1992 the faculty awarded him a concert diploma in organ with unanimous distinction. By then he had already received recognition as a composer, earning a prize at the 1991 international composition competition held during the Festival of European Church Music in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany. From 1997 to 2001 he acted as music director of Mansfield College at Oxford University and concurrently taught at Cambridge University; during those years he performed extensively throughout Europe, the United States, and the Middle East. His first recording appeared in 1999 on the Priory Records release Great European Organs No. 55: The ARP Schnitger Organ of St. Jacobi, Hamburg.
Returning to Austria in 2001, Reymaier joined the faculty of the University of Graz as professor of organ and improvisation, remaining until 2005, when he entered a Vienna seminary. Ordination followed in 2009. The next year he was appointed director of music for the Archdiocese of Vienna together with the post of Cathedral Curate at St. Stephen’s. In 2016 he and Ernst Wally were jointly named Cathedral Organists at St. Stephen’s, a position he continues to hold in the early 2020s. Frequently invited to lead master classes and seminars on organ construction, Reymaier supervised the lengthy renovation of the cathedral’s principal instrument—one of the world’s largest—which concluded in 2020 after twenty-five years of unplayability. He documented the restored organ on two Deutsche Grammophon albums: The New Organ at St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna (2020) and César Franck: Trois Pièces et Trois Corals (2022).
Returning to Austria in 2001, Reymaier joined the faculty of the University of Graz as professor of organ and improvisation, remaining until 2005, when he entered a Vienna seminary. Ordination followed in 2009. The next year he was appointed director of music for the Archdiocese of Vienna together with the post of Cathedral Curate at St. Stephen’s. In 2016 he and Ernst Wally were jointly named Cathedral Organists at St. Stephen’s, a position he continues to hold in the early 2020s. Frequently invited to lead master classes and seminars on organ construction, Reymaier supervised the lengthy renovation of the cathedral’s principal instrument—one of the world’s largest—which concluded in 2020 after twenty-five years of unplayability. He documented the restored organ on two Deutsche Grammophon albums: The New Organ at St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna (2020) and César Franck: Trois Pièces et Trois Corals (2022).
Albums
