Mendelssohn

Alma Schindler (later Mahler-Werfel) ‘connects’ with Mendelssohn

Tuesday 24^th January 1899 

Pm. Composed a song by Heine … and believed it’s not bad. Unfortunately, as I later realised, Mendelssohn took pleasure in the song too – dangerour competition. Nothing can compare with my joy when I take a song I’ve just finished and play it through. I it over and over, and in the sound, I hear my own image. When Mama sings my songs it’s something very special. When she makes a mistake, my anger knows no bounds … as if I’d been torn apart. Alma Mahler-Werfel (née Schindler) Diaries 1898-1902 Selected by Antony Beaumont, Cornell Paperbacks, New York 1997

 Mendelssohn was to be heard in the Kensington Church Street salons of the Horselys, or taking the train from Wapping to Blackwall on the elevated London and Blackwall Railway. We can do that ourselves-the extended viaduct of the railway is now the Docklands Light Railway.

June 21 1842: ‘This evening at seven o’clock we dine with Bunsen and as we do not know what we will do with our evening afterwards, we shall probably drive to Charles Kemble’s about eleven o’clock and be among his early guests; the late ones will not arrive till after midnight. And the persistently bright and beautiful weather besides all this! The other morning we went first to see the Tower, the Catherine Docks, then the Tunnel, then ate fish at Blackwall, had tea at Greenwich, and came home by way of Peckham; we travelled on foot, in a carriage, on a railway, in a boat, and in a steamboat….

On his first visit to England, Mendelssohn had been introduced to the Horsleys by his friends, Klingemann and Rosen, professo