Youth Klavierstücke 1825-1827

End of an era

This collection is the third and final installment of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s youthful piano compositions. Hensel wrote these pieces when she was 19-21 years old, before two major life changes would mark the end of her childhood: reunion with her beloved Wilhelm Hensel and separation from her brother and best friend Felix. Fanny and her three younger siblings spent their days studying music and the humanities, creating art of all kinds, and playing with each other in the massive garden of the family house at Leipzigerstrasse in Berlin. The pieces in this collection were written between 1825 and 1827 and include a couple of Fanny’s most unusual pieces. Fanny had studied some of Beethoven’s later sonatas in 1825, and his influence can be heard in H165 and H166, where Fanny strays further from expected tonality and style than she had before. H167 is another notable piece for its unique use of hairpins to indicate tempo changes instead of dynamic changes.