The great-great-great-granddaughter of German composer Fanny Mendelssohn has offered to assist a pianist planning a lecture about her and a recital of her Easter Sonata.

Angela Zanders will hold these at St Christopher’s Church in Haslemere on May 25 at 3pm and St Peter’s Church in Petersfield on June 7 at 7.30pm.

A Herald article about them attracted the attention of BAFTA-winning film-maker Sheila Hayman, who asked to be put in contact with Angela.

Sheila said: “As Fanny's great-great-great-granddaughter, the person who organised the first UK performance of the Easter Sonata in 2017, and writer-director of the recent documentary Fanny: The Other Mendelssohn, which tells the story of the Easter Sonata's discovery and correct attribution to Fanny, I'd love to help.”

Fanny was the sister of Felix Mendelssohn, one of the most famous classical composers.

Sheila said: “She was my great-great-great-grandmother but I didn’t really take much interest in her until 2009, when I made my previous BBC film Mendelssohn, The Nazis, and Me about Felix, his mixed religious heritage and its consequences for the family, his music and the Jewish community under Nazism.

“Fanny’s son Sebastian didn’t have the extraordinary gifts of his mother or uncle, but took it upon himself to write a history of the family, which I read in part at that time.

“Although there is literally not one word about Fanny as a musician or composer, his pen portrait of her character is so arresting and so familiar and so modern that I immediately felt a kind of kinship.

“And then I discovered the story of the Easter Sonata and Angela Mace’s quest to prove its authorship, and that gave me the contemporary spine on which to hang the story.

“I hadn’t planned to attend the performances, not knowing anything about them until reading the article. But let’s see how Angela responds.”