COMPOSERS: Fanny Mendelssohn
LABELS: Opus 111 Invitation
WORKS: Lieder; Piano Trio
PERFORMER: Donna Brown (soprano), Françoise Tillard (piano); Trio Brentano
CATALOGUE NO: OPS 10-012 Reissue (1992)
Had she lived longer and not taken her responsibilities as wife and mother so dutifully, Fanny Mendelssohn, sister of the more famous Felix (who was not, it has been claimed, above passing her songs off as his own) might have achieved a reputation to take her out of her brother’s shadow. Her Lieder are gorgeously melodic, rhapsodically Romantic, intelligent settings of texts by Goethe, Heine, Eichendorff etc, that suggest a particular enthusiasm for Italy. Fortunately she has a champion in the pianist Françoise Tillard, and together with the accomplished French-Canadian soprano Donna Brown, they make a persuasive case for her music. Claire Wrathall
Fanny Mendelssohn: Lieder; Piano Trio
Had she lived longer and not taken her responsibilities as wife and mother so dutifully, Fanny Mendelssohn, sister of the more famous Felix (who was not, it has been claimed, above passing her songs off as his own) might have achieved a reputation to take her out of her brother’s shadow. Her Lieder are gorgeously melodic, rhapsodically Romantic, intelligent settings of texts by Goethe, Heine, Eichendorff etc, that suggest a particular enthusiasm for Italy.
Our rating
4
Published: January 20, 2012 at 3:17 pm