About this Event
A film screening and a British-German panel exploring women composers: are things easier for them than in Fanny Mendelsohn's day? And how are women changing the idea of what it is to be a composer, and what music is composed?
Sheila Hayman’s recent film Fanny – The Other Mendelssohn is not only a gripping story about the re-attribution of a piece of music. It is above all a telling reminder of history’s poor record of remembering the work of women artists. Felix Mendelssohn’s older sister Fanny gained some recognition, late in life, of her great talent as a composer, but she was then almost forgotten for 130 years. The situation for women composers has improved since the mid-19th century, but still today 90% of classical concerts contain no work by women. Why? And what will it take to change things?
These and other questions will be discussed by BAFTA-winning film director Sheila Hayman, composer and pianist Electra Perivolaris, described as ‘One of a new generation of female trailblazers’ by BBC Radio 3, and Lydia Rilling, the first female director of the Donaueschingen Music Days (Donaueschinger Musiktage), where in 2023 around 70 per cent of the works premiered were by female composers. Their conversation will be moderated by historian and writer Leah Broad, whose 2023 award-winning book Quartet portrays the lives of four British women composers born between 1856 and 1922.
Followed by a reception.
About the Film
Fanny: The Other Mendelssohn is written and directed by Sheila Hayman, BAFTA winning director and the composer's three times great-granddaughter. It weaves together Fanny's life and the excavation of that life by determined scholars since the 1970s. In doing so, it uncovers the riveting detective story around the Easter Sonata, a brilliant piano piece discovered in manuscript in 1972, recorded at that time as a lost work by Felix Mendelssohn, but, as the film unfolds, proved to be a masterpiece written by his older sister Fanny at the age of just 22. The film climaxes with the first public performance of the sonata by the young piano superstar Isata Kanneh-Mason. Joyful, funny, fascinating and heartbreaking by turns, it's the story of a very modern woman, who happened to live two centuries ago.
UK 2023, colour, 96 minutes, in English.
Director: Sheila Hayman, Executive Producers: Annabel Hobley, Maureen Murray, Alice Webb, Steve Condie, Producer: Sheila Hayman, Cinematographer: Lynda Hall, Editor: Evelyn Franks.
With Anna Beer, Éric Heidsieck, Isata Kanneh-Mason, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Alison Langer, Angela R. Mace, Robinson McClellan, Chi-Chi Nwanoku
Please note that this event will start at 6.45pm and that we do not show any advertising before the film.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Goethe-Institut London, 50 Princes Gate, London, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00 to GBP 5.00