Prof. Dr. Kolja Lessing

Kolja Lessing, one of the most versatile musicians of our time, has given decisive impetus to the music world by combining interpretational and research work with his skills as both pianist and violinist. Thanks to his efforts, for instance, Georg Philipp Telemann's Violin Fantasias and Johann Paul Westhoff's Violin Suites have been rediscovered for the concert stage along with many significant piano works by twentieth-century composers and Carl Czerny. Internationally acclaimed CD recordings provide evidence of a varied approach to repertoire ranging from the Baroque era to the present day, encompassing both standard works and rarities.

Kolja Lessing's worldwide concert and recording activities as a violinist and pianist include collaboration with leading orchestras and conductors like Yakov Kreizberg, Nello Santi, Israel Yinon and Lothar Zagrosek as well as widely diverging chamber-music projects. In 2008 he was awarded the German Critics’ Prize for Music. In 2010 the TV-documentary “Ferne Klänge” on his efforts for music in exile had its first broadcast. In 2015 he was honored with the Otto-Hirsch-Award by the city of Stuttgart, in 2020 with the Verdienstorden der Bundesrepublik Deutschland.

Numerous premieres of violin works which composers like Haim Alexander, Tzvi Avni, Abel Ehrlich, Jacqueline Fontyn, Berthold Goldschmidt, Ursula Mamlok, Krzysztof Meyer, Dimitri Terzakis and Hans Vogt have written specially for Kolja Lessing reflect his international reputation along with the fact that he is regularly invited to give master classes and lectures in Europe and North America.

Since 2000 he has taught as a professor for violin at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart. Grown up in a musical family, Kolja Lessing’s most important teachers were Hansheinz Schneeberger and - in later years - Berthold Goldschmidt and Erwin Chargaff. In 2022 he has got a PhD for his book on Ignace Strasfogel.