Dorothea Craxton - Complete Songs - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

C.E.F. Weyse - Key Masterpieces [COMPACT DISCS] date 07/27/2010

A gifted composer of some 500 works, mainly songs and small piano pieces, Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel has been eclipsed by the fame of her younger brother Felix Mendelssohn. Yet her sensitivity in setting the German Romantic poets she loved, principally Goethe, Heine, Geibel and von Eichendorff, warrants greater attention. Like Clara Schumann, whose songs Dorothea Craxton has also recorded for Naxos (8.570747), Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel. possessed a distinct and richly powerful musical voice, by turns introspective, melancholic.

Felix Mendelssohn's elder sister Fanny was for years just a footnote in music history, but is now recognized as a gifted composer in her own right. Possessing all of the fragile and intimate qualities of the German Romantic tradition, her songs are notable for their sensitive word-setting and deeply personal expressiveness. This second volume includes ten world premiere recordings and is a collection of mostly unknown and unpublished settings of German poets such as Heine, Goethe and Hety, coupled with six songs in English to texts by Byron and Mary Alexander. Volume 1 can be found on Naxos 8.570981.