RAUM FÜR FANNY HENSEL [ROOM FOR FANNY HENSEL]

Event series with composition competition in the academic year 2014/15

On November 14, 1805, a girl was born in Hamburg who is still occasionally written about today as Fanny Hensel-Mendelssohn (or Mendelssohn-Hensel). That was never her name. Fanny Zippora Mendelssohn became Fanny Cäcilia Mendelssohn Bartholdy at the age of ten after her baptism. After her marriage to the Prussian court painter Wilhelm Hensel, she used his last name from 1829. When she began to publish her compositions in print only a few years before her unexpectedly early death (1847), she did so under the name Fanny Hensel, née Mendelssohn Bartholdy.

The composer's 210th birthday on November 14, 2015, provides an opportunity to give her a special gift: The venue at the mdw - University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, previously known as the Fanny Hensel-Mendelssohn Hall, will be renamed the Fanny Hensel Hall in historically correct fashion. To ensure that this name is also imprinted on the public's consciousness, a year-long series of events will take place, beginning on the 209th birthday of the composer. Its motto "Raum für Fanny Hensel" (Room for Fanny Hensel) alludes on the one hand to the new name of the concert hall; on the other hand, it is intended to make clear that spaces for cultural activity are created by people making music with and for each other.

A total of five moderated concerts will be held: Two - in January and May 2015 - trace those historical places and cultural spaces in which Fanny Hensel was able to realize herself artistically as a composer, pianist, concert organizer and conductor. They fill 'her space' with her music. The March 2015 concert, on the other hand, recalls the musical activities of her female family members in Berlin and Vienna. Namely, her great-aunt Fanny von Arnstein is of utmost importance to the mdw: she is considered a co-founder of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna and thus of the predecessor institution of the mdw - the Singschule (from 1818 Conservatorium).

These concerts will be framed by the competition for the Fanny Hensel Composition Prize, offered for the first time to students at Austrian music universities. Awarded on the 209th birthday, it ends one year later on the 210th birthday with a premiere concert, which is also the finale. The patron of the competition is the Mendelssohn Gesellschaft e.V. in Berlin, which was founded in 1967 by a great-granddaughter of Fanny Hensel.

Please switch to the German version of this website for more information on this event.