Target reached!
We are thrilled to have hit our initial target, which was for a 25% share of the ove...
Fanny Hensel (Mendelssohn) Lieder - 2CD RECORDING
Leipzig, Germany
Aim
To fund our production of a 2CD release for First Hand Records of Fanny Hensel's Lieder, recorded in the Mendelssohn-Haus (Leipzig)
The CD
Though researchers have discovered a lot about Fanny Hensel's life and sourced the manuscripts she created, her music continues to be less well known. Academic enterprises have outnumbered musical ones, and this recording seeks to go part way to remedy this.
We will be recording roughly 50 songs from Hensel's repertoire. These will include 28 premiere or new arrangements that have never been recorded and have potentially not been heard since they were written!
The discs will be curated to guide the listener through the rich and varied musical life of Fanny Hensel, including songs from the different compositional phases and poets she chose to set.
The discs complement the free online resource www.henselsongsonline.org - an online edition of the complete songs published in Winter 2021.
Creatives
Tim Parker-Langston - Tenor and Producer
Alison Langer - Soprano
Stephanie Wake-Edwards - Mezzo Soprano
Jennifer Parker - Mezzo Soprano
Genevieve Ellis - Piano
Jâms Coleman - Piano
Ewan Gilford - Piano
David Jones (Sonus Audio) - Producer and sound engineer
About Fanny Hensel
Fanny Hensel (geb. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy) was born in 1805 to Jewish parents Abraham and Lea Mendelssohn. Fanny was the Mendelssohns’ first child, followed in 1809 by her brother, Felix and subsequently Paul and Rebekah.
Early into their childhood it was recognised that Fanny and Felix were prodigious musical talents and they were provided with a comprehensive musical education - administered by Karl Friedrich Zelter and Ludwig Berger. Fanny was tutored in piano and composition and by the age of 14 she had completed her first known composition - Lied zum Geburtstag des Vaters; as well as having a growing reputation as a formidable pianist.
Though Fanny and Felix shared this educational experience, as adulthood approached the siblings’ paths diverged dramatically. It was expected that as she entered womanhood, Fanny would marry and dedicate her energies to domestic and maternal roles. As a Jewish family in the increasingly conservative Germany, the Mendelssohns faced additional pressures to assimilate - making it all the more important that Fanny’s life strengthen the reputation of the Mendelssohn-Bartholdys as a ‘good Christian-German family’.
The consequences of these pressures were immortalised in a letter to Fanny from her Father, in which he underlines the reality that for her music was not to become a profession (as it would for Felix) but to remain as ‘an ornament’; as Fanny was beginning her life as a wife and mother, Felix was embarking on a Grand Tour of Europe that would announce his entry into professional music - the illusion of equality that the siblings shared as children was lost.
Fanny was undeterred. Though her musical career was to be restricted to the private sphere, she continued to develop and practice her craft. From her mother Lea, she inherited the curatorship of the family’s Sunday Musicales - events that would welcome nearly three-hundred invited guests to consume musical performances that would include operas, oratorios, concerti, Lieder and sonatas. In this space Fanny embodied the roles of performer, composer, curator, host and conductor and though private events, her musical gatherings were a highly-regarded and sought after experience within the musical society in Berlin.
Alongside the Sonntagsmusik, composition was central to Fanny’s musical career and she wrote pieces throughout her entire life. By the time of her death in 1847 she had written over 450 works and rivalled the prolificacy of contemporaries Schubert and Schumann with her Lieder output of nearly 250 songs.
Owing in part to the socio-political forces that had restricted her during her life and on the other hand to family politics, Fanny remained hesitant about the publication of her works until the last part of her life, when after years of waiting Felix expressly wrote to support her in the endeavour (a complex issue that has been critique effectively by Marion Wilson Kimber).
Fanny published seven opuses before her untimely death after a stroke, aged only 41. Felix would only go on to survive his sister by six months, but during this time he compiled a further three opuses of Fanny’s compositions for publication.
After the death of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy the only songs available from Hensel’s compositional catalogue were those that she and her brother had published with Bote & Bock. As anti-semitism gained its terrifying momentum during and beyond the long-nineteenth century in Germany music by Jewish composers was rejected for its domestic and effeminate qualities, replaced by Wagnerism and the search for a wholly German music.
It was not until the 1980s that Fanny was given the attention that she had long been overdue. During the 2nd Wave Feminist movement the field of musicology was challenged over its male-dominated canon and the restrictive frameworks of study and performance that left little room for women composers or their music. Alongside her contemporary Clara Wieck (a.k.a. Schumann), Fanny was held up as an example of an historical woman composer who had been unjustly overlooked.
Since this point, many scholars have worked hard to paint a picture of what we now know was an incredibly rich musical life, in which Fanny quietly defied the restrictions handed to her by her family and society, each act of notation a semi-political act.
Venue
We are thrilled to be recording in the Garden Room at the Mendelssohn-Haus, Leipzig. A space in which Fanny may well have performed her own composition. There is a beautiful Steinway from the 1920s in a space that boasts a special acoustic. To be performing in this historic space will be inspiring for performers and producer alike and we hope to capture the thrilling nature of the venue in the discs for our listeners.
Budget
Making a recording of this calibre and with such quality artists and spaces is a costly process. We are raising money primarily to cover the travel costs of all artists including accommodation and per diem for their time in Leipzig. One top of this, the artists will receive a recording fee. We have taken care to budget frugally without taking advantage of our artists or lessening the quality of the final product.
We are crowdfunding for a 25% stake of our overall project budget. We have raised £1500 of the total budget to date, with support from the Ambache Charitable Trust.
Audio featured in the Crowdfunder:
Felix and Fanny MENDELSSOHN: Complete Works for Cello and Piano [FHR81]
Joël Marosi, cello
Esther Walker, piano
℗ & © 2020 The copyright in these sound recordings is owned by First Hand Records Ltd
This project successfully funded on 28th October 2022