Daddy Mendelssohn is complicated.
Among people with a passing familiarity with Fanny Hensel, if they know one fact about her father Abraham, it is that he forbade his daughter from pursuing a career in music, telling her that while Felix would perhaps be a pro, for Fanny, music could only be an “ornament” to her life, never the foundation of who she was. But that’s not actually what he said.
Decca Classics and performativity
Fanny’s weird micro-era of February 1826