For the affluent Mendelssohns, a woman's place was in the home. So even though in early days Fanny's piano playing and general musicianship were rated by some as still more remarkable than her young brother's, any thought of a musical career for her was out to the question. In 1829 at 24, she married the painter, Wilhelm Hensel, resigning herself over the years to the realization that few of her very many compositions—for nothing could dam their flow—would ever find their way into print. In Elysian Fields, how delighted she must be that after something like a century-and-a-half, they have now been awakened from sleep by Liana Serbescu.
Nothing is more personally revealing than Das Jahr, a suite of 12 character pieces each depicting a month of the year. When writing it in 1841 she had just spent one of the happiest years of her life with her husband and small son in Italy. The music is like an overflow from her diary, ending with a chorale-inspired postlude. As she put it: ''And a glorious dear, rich time is over. … It brought the purest enjoyments of which a human heart is capable, there was hardly a single unpleasant quarter of an hour in all that time, and no pain save the pain of its passing. But I have an eternal, imperishable picture in my soul, a picture which time cannot dim. I thank Thee, O God.'' The Felix Mendelssohn-inspired ''February'' (a scherzo) and ''September'' (a song without words), likewise the Chopin-Nocturne-inspired ''June'' are among the most telling of the set because not too loosely improvisational or protracted. But all 12 testify to an exuberantly impressionable imagination, with many an arresting stroke both harmonic and textural—en route to heighten atmosphere.
The second of the two discs goes primarily to sonatas, ranging from a single E major movement written when she was 16 to the G minor Sonata of 1843 completed only two years before her death. If the earlier undertakings include their share of note-spinning (though not the charming Andante of the C minor Sonata of 1824) the G minor work is remarkable for its romantic vision, including attempts to link the movements into a continuous whole. It's just too bad that inspiration runs out before the end of the protracted finale. But the gem of this disc, for me, is the Andante cantabile, Op. 6 No. 3 (one of her very few published compositions) a miniature which in its sense of wonder could almost have come from Schumann.
Even if Liana Serbescu's fingerwork is not as effortless or elegant as might have been wished at moments of technical trial, her heart is always in the right place. She also deserves credit for her work as editor. The shallow reproduction of the piano itself earns no more than two stars.'