Harry Baechtel & Chuck Dillard: Forgotten Spring: The Early Lieder of Fanny Hensel
Acis

In addition to being Felix Mendelssohn's sister, Fanny Hensel (1805-47) warrants attention for the considerable body of music she produced during her forty-two years. As Hensel scholar Steve Rodgers clarifies in liner notes written for this superb collection, she believed her talents were best suited to lieder, even though she also created a piano trio, oratorio, string quartet, and other pieces. Still, the fact remains that of the 460 pieces she composed, nearly 250 are songs. It's Rodgers' assertion that the circumstances of her time rendered moot the possibility of creating ambitious orchestral works and led her to concentrate on writing lieder and keyboard miniatures. He also asserts, however, that these forms naturally suited her temperament and personality as writing songs enabled her to create musical settings for poems she loved.

Arguing vehemently on behalf of Hensel's artistry are baritone Harry Baechtel and pianist Chuck Dillard, who on Forgotten Spring deliver twenty-one unpublished lieder in a compact forty-four minutes. Both bring impressive qualifications to the venture, Baechtel a veteran of many opera productions and recitals and currently an Associate Professor at Portland State University (PSU) and Dillard an experienced and sought-after accompanist to vocalists and instrumentalists and an Assistant Professor at PSU. As educators and scholars, it makes sense that the two would be captivated by Hensel's story and want to share her largely under-appreciated music with the world, but their interest isn't merely academic: their affection for her material resonates throughout the performances. They make an incontrovertible case on her behalf as someone who deserves to be appreciated for her artistry and not just for being the sister of a famous brother. Forgotten Spring has value, for the music and performances but also for bringing attention to a composer whose work has until now remained almost wholly unpublished.

Baechtel and Dillard chose to focus on early compositions Hensel wrote between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one. She composed songs from 1819 to 1847, with nearly 180 written in the first half of that span and fewer than seventy in the second, and it's from that earlier grouping that the performers draw. Adding to the special character of the release, Dillard accompanies his partner on a J. B. Streicher piano (1848) rather than the standard concert grand, a choice that amplifies the intimate tone of the project and grants the listener a portal to an earlier era. Most of the pieces are set to German texts by Ludwig Tieck, Johann Heinrich Voß, Sir Walter Scott, Johann Ludwig Uhland, and Johann Peter Eckermann; adding to the personal dimension of Fanny's creative work, “Die Linde” (The Linden) is based on words by her sister-in-law, Luise Hensel.

Rodgers' notes are illuminating for providing historical context but also for drawing attention to the way Hensel customized her writing to the different writers and to their words. Note, for instance, the way an upward movement in “Die Einsamwandelnde” (The Lonely Wanderer) is followed by descent in the transition from the (translated) line “In the breast dwelled love” to “And now it is so dead, so empty.” As the titles for the songs indicate, many of them are set to melancholy poems having to do with night, longing, mortality, and parting; offsetting that are songs that rhapsodize about the bliss of solitude, the spiritual replenishment communing with nature affords, and the rapture experienced by lovers. No song is probably more radiant than “Sie liebt, mich liebt die Auserwählte” (She loves, she loves me, the chosen one!), whose words by Voß are far unlike the (separate) verses in Hensel's two treatments of “Sehnsucht” (Longing).

Her gift for articulating yearning is evident in the opening “Im Herbste” (In Autumn), with its words by Uhland delivered with characteristic sensitivity by the musicians. The Tieck-set “Nacht” (Night) that follows is urgent in its depiction of a wanderer rushing through the night and looking to the stars for comfort. Mirroring the trajectory of Tieck's words, “Abschied” (Farewell) sees glimmers of hope emerging amidst despair. Written when she was fourteen (and thus five years before Schubert's familiar setting of the same words by Scott), “Ave Maria” features chromatic touches in its intro and postlude. Composed just after her fifteenth birthday and set to words by Scott, “So musst' ich von dir scheiden” (So I have had to leave you) showcases her, as Rodgers states, “knack for expressive chromaticism.” The song, which has to do with a man summoned to war and lamenting departure from his bride, plays like an unremitting outpouring of sorrow.

June 2025