Youth Klavierstücke 1823-1824

Increasing complexity

This collection is the second installment of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s early piano compositions. These works, written when she was 17-18 years old, show an increasing complexity and ambition in her keyboard composition, and the influence of J.S. Bach on this developing composer (particularly in works H114, H127, and H130). Fanny’s brother Felix (age 15) had received a copy of the score of St. Matthew’s Passion from grandmother Bella Salomon around the time the first works in this collection were composed. Bach would have been a regular topic of conversation in the Mendelssohn household, at a time when “Bach was generally dismissed as an unintelligible musical arithmetician,” per R. Larry Todd.

H99 - Klavierstück. Lento ma non troppo in C Major

H102 - Klavierstück. Andantino in B-flat Major

H114 - Toccata in c minor

H116 - Klavierstück in c minor

H127 - Gigue in e minor

H130 - Klavierstück. Allegro di molto in g minor

H132 - Klavierstück in f minor

H139 - Klavierstück. Allegro in c minor