Notes for: July 16, 2013
Fanny Mendelssohn was the older sister of composer Felix Mendelssohn and granddaughter of the great German-Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. In 1829, after a courtship of several years, Fanny married the painter Wilhelm Hensel, and today her music is heard in the concert hall and on records under both her maiden and her married names.
The Mendelssohn family’s first-born child, Fanny enjoyed the same musical education as her brother, including study with the leading musicians of Leipzig and performance of her music at the Sunday morning concerts at the family residence. However, while she showed prodigious ability as both a pianist and a budding composer, the prevailing attitudes of the time toward women having a profession limited her career opportunities. As a result, her family strongly opposed her dreams of becoming a concert pianist or even a composer, and she found consolation in the success of her brilliant brother as a composer, pianist and conductor.
Fortunately, Hensel encouraged her to compose, and a few of her lieder (songs) and small piano pieces began to receive public performances. At the age of 33, she made a public appearance as a pianist at a charity concert, playing Felix’s Piano Concerto No.1, but she did not publish her own Opus 1 – a collection of songs – until the year before her death. Meanwhile, Felix had published six of her piano pieces under his name.
In recent years, Fanny’s music has become better known thanks to concert performances and a number of CDs. Her reputation has also been advanced by those researching female musical creativity, and she is one of the relatively few well-documented exemplars in the early 19th century. But there is still a lot to discover in the archives of the Prussian State Library. We now know that Fanny composed 460 pieces of music, including this piano trio and several books of solo piano pieces and songs. Of these works, less than one-third are available on records.
Dating from 1846, the year before Fanny’s death, this Piano Trio was intended as a birthday gift for Felix’s and Fanny’s sister Rebekah. In 1850, it was submitted by the family to the publisher Breitkopf and Hartel in a belated effort to win Fanny a posthumous public for her instrumental music.
In four movements, the outer movements are extroverted in spirit, balancing the more intimate inner movements. Thus, the opening Allegro molto vivace begins with a flowing, restless accompaniment in the piano over which a beautiful, broad melody of yearning is sung by the strings. The second theme, which reappears in the fourth movement, is more lyrical. This is clearly music by a master pianist.
In the middle movements, Fanny dips into her customary world of the lied (song). The second movement, andante espressivo, though romantic, is introspective and reflective in mood. Fanny, in fact, titled the third movement “Lied”, and this little Allegretto is a charming “Song Without Words” of the sort that Felix made famous.
The finale, allegro moderato, has a brief piano introduction before the strings finally join in. The Hungarian-sounding theme has a sad aura. A second, rhythmically distinct, theme alternates with the first theme, leading to the recall of the second theme from the first movement.