Life and Work
Franz Reizenstein's parents were Dr. Albert Reizenstein (1871-1925) and Lina Kohn (b. 1880), both of Nuremberg, Germany. The family was Jewish and counted many professionals and musically inclined people among its members.
Reizenstein grew up in Nuremberg and was considered a child prodigy. He composed his first pieces when he was 5, and by the age of 17 he had written a string quartet. His well-to-do and artistic family encouraged him to play chamber music at home. Eventually he was sent to study under Paul Hindemith at the Berliner Hochschule für Musik.
In 1934 he emigrated to England at the age of 23 to escape the Nazis, one of nearly 70 Jewish composers to do so from 1933-1945. Once in England, he furthered his studies under Ralph Vaughan Williams at the Royal College of Music, and began to incorporate English music into his works. He also studied the piano for eleven years with Solomon Cutner. He eventually became a professor at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal Northern College of Music (then the Royal Manchester College of Music) in Manchester. Amongst his pupils at the Royal Academy of Music was Philip Martin who he taught piano and composition. His compositional posts were extended when he was invited for six months as a Visiting Professor of Composition at Boston University in the United States, where there were also special concerts given of his works.
Reizenstein published his first piece, the Suite for Piano, Op. 6, in 1936. He gained more attention with the "virtuosic and flamboyant" Prologue, Variations and Finale, Op. 12, composed for the violinist Max Rostal. It was inspired by an extended tour which he took to South America (undertaken with another legendary violinist, Roman Totenberg). Reizenstein performed as a pianist as well as working as a composer.
He composed several chamber and piano works, which are highly regarded, as well as a number of orchestral works, overtures and concertos (a Concerto for String Orchestra, two Piano Concertos, a Violin Concerto and a Cello Concerto). Reizenstein is best remembered for his Piano Quintet in D major, Op. 23 (1949), of which the critic Lionel Salter wrote in Gramophone in July 1975: It "stands alongside Shostakovitch's as the most noteworthy of this century's piano quintets."
He also wrote two operas: Men Against the Sea (1949) and Anna Kraus (1952). He composed a lavish orchestral score for Hammer Studios' horror film The Mummy (1959).
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