The Comic Genius of Gerard Hoffnung - Classic Albums 1956-61

Gerard Hoffnung was an extraordinarily talented personality, an artist, cartoonist, musician, broadcaster, raconteur and impresario, born in Germany in 1925, but who moved to England just before WWII, and in the 1950s started appearing on the BBC and contributing to various humorous magazines. He devised the concept of spoof classical music concerts at London’s famous Royal Festival Hall, where he and a number of respected musicians and ensembles performed elaborate parodies of various serious musical, choral and spoken pieces. This 3-CD collection comprises the complete content of four albums, all recorded ‘live’ at his different performances, some of which were not released until after his tragic and untimely death from a cerebral haemorrhage in 1959 at the age of 34. Those albums are “The Hoffnung Music Festival Concert”, “The Hoffnung Interplanetary Music Festival”, “The Hoffnung Astronomical Music Festival”, and “Hoffnung At The Oxford Union”. The Oxford Union album, featuring him in his solo role as a raconteur, includes his legendary “barrel of bricks” story, consistently in demand over the years on BBC radio record request programmes. It’s a magnificently eccentric and entertaining memento of a unique and brilliant polymath.