Complementing the historically important 2021 publication of the complete songs of Fanny Hensel, this album has been curated to guide the listener through the rich and varied musical life of the composer, including songs from the different compositional phases and poets Hensel chose to set.

Recorded at Mendelssohn-Haus, Leipzig where Hensel herself once lived, the 34 tracks on this recording feature many songs which have never been performed in public before, 17 of which are premiere recordings.

The album cover features a specially commissioned work by Glasgow-based artist Kirsty Matheson.

Though researchers have discovered a lot about Fanny Hensel's (Mendelssohn-Hensel) life and sourced the manuscripts she created, her music continues to be less well known. Academic enterprises have outnumbered musical ones, and this recording seeks to go part way to remedy this.

The album unfolds chronologically, beginning with early musical experiments from Hensel's teenage years (Wenn ich ihn nur habe, Die Schonheit nicht, o M?dchen and Wohl deinem Liebling). As the years pass, Hensel's ambition can be heard clearly as her musical style develops and the expressive vocal writing becomes more assured. As the years pass, Hensel's ambition can be heard clearly as her musical style develops and the expressive vocal writing becomes more assured. Tracks 12-20 explore 1827, one of Hensel's most prolific years of song writing, featuring a selection of beautiful settings of poems by Ludwig Heinrich Christoph Hölty (1748-1776), many of which are premiere recordings. As the album approaches it's end, we hear songs that resemble more closely those published opuses from 1846-47, including the Baroque intoned Mutter, o sing mich zur Ruh' and Vorwurf, the latter of which was published posthumously in Hensel's Op. 10 by her mourning brother.