CANYON, Texas — Works by a composer overlooked in her time will be featured in an upcoming recital at West Texas A&M University.
“The Music of a Stifled Voice,” featuring compositions by Fanny Hensel, will be performed at 3 p.m. Dec. 2 in the Sybil B. Harrington Fine Arts Complex Recital Hall on WT’s Canyon campus.
Admission is free.
The concert will feature, from WT’s School of Music, Dr. Choong-ha Nam, professor of piano; Emmanuel Lopez, Periman Distinguished Artist and Harrington Lecturer in Cello; and Evgeny Zvonnikov, Harrington Lecturer in Violin. Also performing is cellist Alejandra Attebury.
Hensel composed some 500 pieces, but she was in the shadow of her much more famous brother, Felix Mendelssohn, and only recently has her music begun to get recognition, Nam said.
“I find Fanny Hensel’s music compelling, complex and beautiful. Her music is harmonically daring and inventive,” Nam said. “Because she did not intend to publish her music, and therefore put them under the eyes of the critics, she was freer to experiment with what would be considered ‘far-flung’ harmonic regions in her compositions.”
Nam and the string players will perform Hensel’s Piano Trio in D Minor, Sonata o Fantasia in G Minor for Cello and Piano, and Capriccio for Cello and Piano in A-flat. Nam also will perform three solo piano works: Song for Piano in B Minor, Allegro Molto in C Minor and Adagio in E-flat.
“The three solo piano works only scratch the surface of her vast output for solo piano. A virtuoso pianist, she favored the instrument, and there are dozens of wonderful pieces one can program,” Nam said. “I hope that the audience will leave the performance wanting to explore more of her music. I believe they will.”
Fostering an appreciation of the arts is a key component of the University’s long-range plan, WT 125: From the Panhandle to the World.
That plan is fueled by the historic One West comprehensive fundraising campaign, which reached its initial $125 million goal 18 months after publicly launching in September 2021. The campaign’s new goal is to reach $175 million by 2025; currently, it has raised more than $150 million.
