Das Jahr - The Year

Olga Pashchenko showcases Fanny Mendelssohn's cycle of 13 piano pieces describing the passage of a year, within a reimagining for period instrument orchestra by four contemporary composers: Roxanna Panufnik, Electra Perivolaris, Freya Waley-Cohen and Errollyn Wallen.

Fanny Mendelssohn’s description of her piano cycle Das Jahr as a “small piece which is giving me much fun” reflects the challenges women composers had to get their work taken seriously in the 19th Century. It is, after all, a substantial piece – each movement representing a month of the year – lasting 50 minutes in performance that could sit alongside ‘pillars’ of the piano repertoire by Schumann, Brahms or Tchaikovsky. When it came to orchestral music, she was faced with another obstacle: women simply weren’t commissioned to write for orchestras.

In this concert, Das Jahr and other works by Fanny Mendelssohn are performed alongside four new works for an 1840s period orchestra by contemporary composers. Inspired by Fanny Mendelssohn’s remarkable work, each has drawn on the musical materials within a movement of Das Jahr to create a vision of what Fanny might have been able to forge in 1841 in a more equal world.