A very short post today. I am delighted to see that the new Franz Reizenstein website has gone online at:- Franz Reizenstein.com
Reizenstein is one of the ‘forgotten’ twentieth century composers.’ He was born in Nuremberg in 1911 and studied piano with Leonid Kreutzer and composition with Paul Hindemith. However he came to the United Kingdom in 1934 continued his career in this country under the auspices of Ralph Vaughan Williams and the pianist Solomon. During the Second World War he was interned in the Isle of Man.
After the war, he taught at the Royal Manchester College of Music and in the United States at Boston University.
His works are mainly for chamber ensembles and piano solo; however there are a number of orchestral pieces including a concerto for String Orchestra and a variety of concertos for piano (2), violin and cello. He also wrote the film music for The Mummy (1959) and The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (1964)
Unfortunately he has not been well represented in the CD catalogues – Arkiv notes only seven recordings containing his works however, the new website list some 17 discs.
Grove Dictionary has suggested that Franz Reizenstein’s ‘compositional style evinces a synthesis of the contrapuntal vigour and terse motivic process of Hindemith with the lyrical expansiveness of Vaughan Williams and the English tradition’.
So please have a look at this great new website.
Fascinating website this, from which I have discovered that a 1956 recording of Reizenstein's Concerto Popolare is available, featuring Yvonne Arnaud as soloist (after Eileen Joyce turned it down, spoilsport). I recently obtained Variations on The Lambeth Walk (Continuum CCD 1007); brilliant stuff, this guy was so musically imaginative.
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