Fanny Mendelssohn: Overture in C major (c1830-2)
Legend has it that, during one of Felix Mendelssohn’s visits to Buckingham Palace, Queen Victoria sang a selection of the composer’s songs to him: on naming her favourite of them, she was told that, actually, it was composed by his sister Fanny! Therein lies a clue to her lot as a female musician in the first half of the 19th century: even her father wrote to her that “Music will perhaps become [your brother’s] profession, while for you it can and must be only an ornament”. Although four years his senior the two received their somewhat privileged musical education alongside each other, with no obvious signs that she was his inferior. These grandchildren of one of the greatest Jewish philosophers (Moses Mendelssohn), and offspring of a wealthy and influential banker (Abraham), were assuredly afforded opportunities denied to most young students. In 1825 the family moved to No.3 Leipzigerstrasse, on the outskirts of Berlin, which boasted a “garden house” containing a concert space to seat up to 300 people! Felix’s and Fanny’s side of the bargain was to study and learn with prodigious application and devotion, and so to fill this place with sounds as well as people. Yet it was thought unwise (“for family reasons”) that she should publish her music under her own name.
Although the number of her compositions adds up to around a staggering 450, the vast majority of which are Lieder and piano pieces, this overture is her only purely orchestral work. Composed around the time of Felix’s Reformation Symphony – which Fanny herself conducted – her overture was not even published during her lifetime. Starting with a lyrical Andante, it explodes with cascades of violin notes into an Allegro di molto of great power and passion. Formally not so far removed from Felix’s own concert overtures, listen carefully and see how it compares…… In the Spring of 1847 Felix undertook his tenth visit to England where, in the space of a fortnight, he conducted six performances (in London, Manchester, and Birmingham) of a newly revised version of Elijah – whose premiere he had given in Birmingham Town Hall on 26 August the previous year, to overwhelming acclaim. Other engagements, both musical and social, had to be crammed in around Elijah. Finally, on 9 May, totally exhausted, he crossed the English Channel (for the last time), arriving home in Frankfurt three days later; before he had time to recover he was suddenly presented with the news of his beloved Fanny’s unexpected death – from a paralytic stroke, on the 14th – while conducting a rehearsal of her brother’s cantata Die erste Walpurgisnacht. The shock was so great that he immediately collapsed, unconscious for a frightening length of time. Before the end of the month he had re-located, via Baden-Baden, to Interlaken, in hope of recovery – where visitors were shocked to find he had “severely aged, and walked with a stoop”. On 30 October he had declined alarmingly, surviving just a few more days until 4 November. Thus, in the space of just five months, this most astonishingly gifted pair of siblings had departed this world.
© Alan George
