Helen Heslop

hilarious and touching. Extremely clever. Loved it

This book is a riveting account of Mendelssohn's family, early genius, musical education, German and e.g. British musical life, and the gestation of his works. I especially appreciated the hundreds of musical examples. The religious, ethnic and cultural issues are treated with much delicacy. The family's differential treatment of Fanny is also fascinating and telling. Prof Todd brings alive a vanished 'pre-Holocaust' world, where differences between e.g. Lutherans and Huguenots still counted as problems, where Chopin, Liszt and Mendelssohn crossed paths in the first years of their careers, where it took weeks to cross Europe, and when the family was welcome to stay when visiting Goethe.