Kolja Lessing

* 1961 in Karlsruhe; violinist, pianist and university teacher; studied violin with Szeryng and with Hansheinz Schneeberger in Basel as well as piano; after professorships for violin at the music academies in Würzburg and Leipzig he has taught at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart since 2000. He combines interpretative and scholarly work: at his instigation Georg Philipp Telemann’s violin fantasias and Johann Paul Westhoff’s violin suites, among others, were rediscovered for the concert hall. In 1999 he received the Johann-Wenzel-Stamitz-Sonderpreis for his commitment to ostracised composers, and in 2008 the Deutscher Kritikerpreis für Musik. Haim Alexander, Tzvi Avni, Abel Ehrlich, Jacqueline Fontyn, Berthold Goldschmidt and Hans Vogt wrote violin works especially for him. CD productions have appeared with Decca, Capriccio and Edition Abseits, among others. On the album Jacqueline Fontyn and the Concerto, released by Cybele Records in 2014, he can be heard as violinist.