Fanny Mendelssohn, piano suite Das Jahr (The Year)

Fanny Mendelssohn, Felix's older sister, was as talented and precocious a pianist and composer as her brother, if not more so. She enjoyed the same musical education and toured like him half of Europe under the generous patronage of Abraham Mendelssohn, the father, a banker. Saving some obstacles, she could have made a career as a concert pianist, choosing the destiny that Clara Schumann would later take, but she opted for composition. And composition, in those years, was almost exclusively a male domain.

Fanny Mendelssohn - Hensel
(1805 - 1847)

The younger brother's view
Her brother Felix was also not very enthusiastic in his support of Fanny's undisputed talents. Comfortably true to the times, in 1837 he wrote: "From what I know of Fanny, I would say that she has no vocation for composition, nor does she feel a natural inclination for it." Happily married for eight years, Fanny was a housewife, in the eyes of her brother: "...to publish her works would only add to her difficulties, and I cannot say that I would approve of that," he added.

Fanny, a real pianist
All in all, Felix agreed to publish several of Fanny's songs under his name. And he was never reluctant to listen to her advice and criticism. Not for nothing, comments of the time point out that Fanny was a better pianist than Felix. At the age of thirteen, she had greeted her father's birthday by playing the 24 Preludes from the Well-Tempered Clavier by heart.

A single opus
In 1846, with the strong support of her husband, the painter Wilhelm Hensel, Fanny decided to publish a collection of songs, her Opus 1. The critics were favorable, but, very unfortunately, Fanny died the following year as a result of complications from a heart attack suffered while rehearsing works by her brother. Felix would follow her within six months, and for the same reasons.

Piano Suite "Das Jahr" - The Year
About 460 works survive from Fanny, mostly songs and works for solo piano. Among the latter, a novel piano suite, Das Jahr, a sort of musical diary of the year she spent with her family in Rome in 1841, stands out.
Begun that same year, it consists of twelve sections describing or representing each month of the year. In a letter to Felix from Rome, Fanny hastens to clarify that the titles are provisional, intimate, familiar nicknames, and that she will think of something else when she has to "interpret them in society". The latter will never happen.

The rendition is by the Canadian pianist Laurence Manning.