Saturday, May 11, at 4:00pm

Van Buren Hall
6 Chatham Street (US Rte 9), Kinderhook, NY 12106

Fanny and Felix

The Brilliant Mendelssohn Siblings

Fanny Hensel: Songs With and Without Words
String Quartet in E-flat
Felix Mendelssohn: Octet in E-flat
Broad Street Chamber Players

• Katherine Rossiter soprano
• David Smith piano
• Elizabeth Silver violin
• Jessica Belflower violin
• Kathryn Aldous violin
• Mitsuko Suzuki violin
• Christine Orio viola
• Ronald Carbone viola
• Erica Pickhardt cello
• Jay Shulman cello

Contribution $20. Reception follows. Van Buren Hall accessible by lift to 2nd floor
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On Saturday, May 11th Concerts in the Village (CITV) will conclude its 9th season with “Fanny and Felix – The Brilliant Mendelssohn Siblings”. Performing will be the Broad Street Chamber Players, soprano Katherine Rossiter and pianist David Smith, CITV Artistic Director.

The first half of the program is devoted to Fanny’s songs “with and without words” and her remarkable String Quartet in E-flat, drawn from her total output of over 500 compositions! The richness, warmth and charm of Fanny’s songs are readily acknowledged by all who have heard them. Her “songs without words” are really short piano pieces of such lyrical quality that they are easily confused with those of her brother Felix. To encourage public acceptance, some of her compositions were in fact published under his name!

Following intermission, eight outstanding string players from the Broad Street Orchestra will perform the Octet, op. 20 by brother Felix. Although one of his most famous works, because of its performing demands and the difficulty in gathering eight qualified players, live performances of the great Octet are not frequent. Composed in 1825 in a matter of just a few months, when Felix was only 16, the drama and scale of this impressive work never fails to sweep listeners away, both musically and emotionally.

Says David Smith, “With this program CITV celebrates the most important sister-brother relationship in all of music history, certainly the closest. The much better-known Felix Mendelssohn and his slightly older sister Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel were highly exceptional both as pianists and as composers. This is commonly acknowledged for Felix, but less often so for Fanny. Prior to the mid-nineteenth century women in music had few opportunities to publish and fewer still to perform in public. Regardless of their gifts, they remained largely unknown. This slowly changed with the career of pianist-composer Clara Schumann and more decisively so with the winning of the Prix de Rome by Lili Boulanger in 1913. Fortunately in the last fifty years Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel has finally begun to receive the attention she so richly deserves.”