Writer and film-maker Sheila Hayman tells an inspirational story here about her great-great-great-grandmother, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel; her film constitutes an important critique of today’s classical music world in which 90% of concerts are of works by men.
Fanny was the brilliant but neglected composer who spent her entire lifetime and much of her afterlife in the shadow of her famous (and adored) composer younger brother Felix. Many of her pieces were attributed to him, including the sparkling lied Italien, which had the honour of being sung by no less a person than Queen Victoria when Felix was a guest at Buckingham Palace in 1842 (he sheepishly admitted the injustice at the time).
