Kolja Lessing, the tireless proponent of 20th-century composers who fell victim to totalitarianism and racial fanaticism, can be experienced in an impressive union of pianist,...

Kolja Lessing, the tireless proponent of 20th-century composers who fell victim to totalitarianism and racial fanaticism, can be experienced in an impressive union of pianist, violist, violinist, musicologist, and author on this first (and, as of yet, only) portrait CD dedicated exclusively to the works of Franz Reizenstein. Reizenstein, born in 1911 in Nuremberg, the city that saw the enactment of Hitler’s racial laws in 1935, which paved the way to the subsequent systematic persecution of Jews in Europe, is known to insiders as a composer of humoristic compositions for Gerard Hoffnung’s legendary concerts at London’s Royal Albert Hall in the 1950s, such as the Concerto Popolare (“The Piano Concerto to end all Piano Concertos”) and Let’s Fake an Opera. Like Reizenstein, Goldschmidt, Wellesz, Gál, and others, Hoffnung, a musician and caricaturist born in Berlin, belonged to the group of German and Austrian artists of Jewish descent, who survived the Third Reich in England, and whose place of exile became their new homeland. Reizenstein, who studied in Berlin with Paul Hindemith and Leonid Kreuzer, had already emigrated to England in 1934, where he resumed his studies at the Royal College of Music under the likes of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Solomon. Reizenstein dedicated his entire life to the aesthetics of Hindemith, who was a great inspiration to him with his re-invention of tonality in conjunction with his mastery of counterpoint, as well as his practical knowledge of virtually all instruments.