Fanny Hensel was Felix Mendelssohn's sister, a fact that goes unmentioned in the detailed booklet that accompanies this disc. The idea, no doubt, is to show that her music can stand on its own merits, and indeed it can. Hensel's style in general seems shaped along the lines of the small piano pieces heard here: her music is fantasy-like, often diverging into a distant key and finding a graceful, logical way back home. A few of her songs tie this quality effectively to the text and are as effective as any song Felix ever ...
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Fanny Hensel was Felix Mendelssohn's sister, a fact that goes unmentioned in the detailed booklet that accompanies this disc. The idea, no doubt, is to show that her music can stand on its own merits, and indeed it can. Hensel's style in general seems shaped along the lines of the small piano pieces heard here: her music is fantasy-like, often diverging into a distant key and finding a graceful, logical way back home. A few of her songs tie this quality effectively to the text and are as effective as any song Felix ever wrote. Hear her setting of Der holde Tal (The Beloved Valley), Goethe's six-line evocation of life's endless renewal: Hensel's music seems to bloom repeatedly as it moves from key to key in smoothly linked chains.The chief attraction of this disc is not simply that it offers an introduction to Hensel's music, but also that it gives an extraordinary look at the creative processes of a composer of this period (around 1840). The 18 pieces included here constitute a travel album...
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