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Cover of the album being discussed (courtesy of Classical Music Communications)
It seems that any time I decide to write about a recording of a performance by Ana-Marija Markovina, it turns out to be a “complete works” release. My most recent encounter with her was in January of 2022 when she released a twelve-CD collection of all of the piano music composed by Felix Mendelssohn. This morning I listened to the last of the four CDs in her latest release, which turns out to be only the first volume of her latest project, recording the complete solo piano compositions by Fanny Hensel, named on the cover of the album as “Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel.” She was older than her brother Felix by about four years.
The amounts to 78 individual tracks. Most of the selections are individual selections. There are only three grouped selections. The shortest of them is the three-movement H 128 solo piano sonata in C minor. The longest consists of six compositions collected in the H 214 Klavierbuch. The third is the four-movement “Ostersonate,” H 235. There are also fourteen pieces given the title “Übungsstück,” which Hensel seemed to prefer to the French “étude.” The entire album serves up slightly less than four and one-half hours of music.
Like the “Felix project,” Markovina recorded these four CDs for Hänssler Classic, which is the “in-house record label” for the German music publishing house, Hänssler-Verlag. I must confess that I may have warmed more to Fanny than to Felix because I had to listen to fewer CDs. (Markovina’s “Felix collection” was released in a single box of 26 CDs.) Nevertheless, I have given the new release a generous amount of listening time, and I find myself warming to her approaches to all this music I have not previously encountered.
My guess is that these CDs will not be gathering dust any time soon!
