8.572403 4 8.572403 8.572403 2 3 Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)
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572403 bk Grieg US_572403 bk Grieg US 22/07/2011 13:12 Page 2 Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) (Norwegian) in this string orchestra version – have a and how much Baroque and Rococo should there be in conjured up a real mirage. Even I was thrilled. I had Vénétienne’ (‘Venetian Serenade’) form used by some Music for String Orchestra • Lyric Suite strongly national ring: the wisdom of the Norwegians different performances? There are other tensions in the positioned the oboist right at the back of the platform, so of Grieg’s composer-contemporaries, including will prevail in the teeth of the storm: ‘We take the true music too: between French and Italian models, and that nobody could see him. He played so perfectly, so Svendsen. The piece also has a lot in common with the Edvard Grieg, unlike many later composers, composed underline the meaning of the original words: The path, through twists and turns, travelling forward to our inspiration from a wide range of composers such as the freely, so like an improvisation that when the great Shepherd Boy movement of the Lyric Suite. Stabbelåten his string music not for chamber orchestra or for Wounded Heart (Hjertesår) and The Last Spring (Siste journey’s end: we must hold fast to our goal, or we will Scarlattis, J.S. Bach, Handel, Couperin and Rameau. To orchestral strings came in, it was as if they were under the (Peasant Dance) is based on a piano piece, which itself specialist string orchestras, but for the string section of a vår). Harmony, melody and instrumentation reflect the fall by the wayside.’ This is Norwegian nationalism my mind this is a case of pastiche where the composer’s spell cast by the oboe, and they continued in exactly the uses a dance from the Valdres region of central Norway, full symphony orchestra. He was inspired by the rich text practically line for line, subtly yet powerfully. with the aim of a democratic struggle for freedom. own identity is not lost. The distance between Baroque same conception.’ The strings repeat the oboe’s material, northwest of Oslo. The introduction sounds like a folk- spectrum of colours and the fusion of different sounds in The Wounded Heart is in the key of C minor, but Language was also important in nation-building: music and Norwegian folk music is not so great, and but with a quintessentially Griegian harmonisation. fiddler’s typical warm-up on the open strings, to check such a large body of strings. He often included the belongs to the same family of dark, dramatic G minor ‘Confident and constant, we speak our Norwegian Grieg had worked a lot with dance forms, so he was by Grieg’s only child, Alexandra, died when she was their tuning. This is certainly the wildest of all Grieg’s works in symphonic programmes he conducted himself works as the Ballade for piano, Op. 24 (1875-76) tongue’. The original text of the steadfast, serious no means in completely unfamiliar territory. The suite very young. Later he wrote several cradle songs. Bådnlåt string orchestra works, a kind of Norwegian precursor of – certainly this was true of the Holberg Suite and the [Naxos 8.550883; orchestration by Geirr Tveitt: Naxos middle section has solidarity and sympathy as its theme: shows his international side while at the same time the (At the Cradle), also from Op. 68, is a cheerful lullaby in the string orchestra music of the Hungarian composer Two Elegiac Melodies. We have many statements in 8.557854], and the String quartet, Op. 27 (1877-78) ‘Come, kind friends! We work side by side.’ musical language is extremely ‘Griegian’. The original which we can perhaps imagine the singer, full of parental Béla Bartók (1881-1945). In a long letter to his which he said that the string orchestra should be large: [Naxos 8.550879]. The lonely open G string at the The First Meeting also exists in a version for voice version, written in July and August 1884, was for piano. love, alternately hushing the child and telling stories of biographer Henry Theophilus Finck (1854-1926), Grieg ‘the bigger, the better’. Several times he named the beginning has almost symbolic weight. The poem has and orchestra [Naxos 8.570236]. Bjørnson’s poem is a In the string orchestration he made later the same year, mysterious lands and faraway kingdoms. In my opinion said that ‘The essential feature of Norwegian folksongs, number of 60 strings as being ideal. Each section is three sad lines before the fourth line brings a change, nature idyll: the enchantment of the first meeting fuses much of the idiomatic piano writing was completely the piece works best when played with the steady pulse as compared with German ones, is a deep melancholy, often divided into many lines, either tutti or solo, with and the music changes too at this point: from C minor to nature and human emotions in quiet ecstasy. Grieg changed and reimagined for the strings, and with of folk music, quietly and hypnotically, as if lulling the which can suddenly veer into wild, uninhibited humour. sometimes as many as 12 separate parts in all, so this is D flat major. The heart has been through the struggles of described a similar atmosphere in his diary in 1865: different metronome markings. child to sleep. The close of the song is long-drawn-out, Mysterious darkness and unbridled wildness – these are another reason why the orchestra should be large. We life and has suffered many wounds, but has survived. ‘Little by little the sun disappeared, as if it sank to sleep The Prelude, thanks to its positive energy, has until the child is finally sleeping soundly. the two sides of Norwegian folksong.’ The ‘rough’ have therefore used a full symphonic string section for Even if the wounds could easily reopen, something in the bosom of the sea; night drew its veil over nature become one of the most often played of all Grieg’s I folketone (In Folk Style) from the Two Nordic aspect of Grieg, which partly grew from the influence of this recording. positive can come from experience. all around us, and a wonderfully gentle, mournful mood pieces. In the second movement, Sarabande, the solemn Melodies for String Orchestra, Op. 63 (1895), is based the folk music, did not go down well with some foreign In the 1870s Grieg and his composer-colleague Spring is frequently played and sung in Norway, not took hold of me.’ One feature of the song is an imitation tread of the Baroque dance, with its emphasis on the on a tune by Fredrik Due, who was at that time the critics, who accused him of ‘Norwegifying’. In writing Johan Svendsen (1840-1911) had performed some string least at funerals. There is also a version of the song for of a call to the animals, and the many shifts between first two of the three beats in each bar, is well captured ambassador of the Norwegian-Swedish Union in Paris. this kind of music Grieg was quite consciously trying to music in Christiania (as Oslo was then called) with the voice and orchestra [Naxos 8.570236]. Vinje’s poem, major and minor intensify the feeling of magic. The by Grieg, though there is also a great deal of Grieg’s piece is an inspired variation-work with a wide be radical: as he put it in his 1866 diary, ‘if true art – newly founded Music Association orchestra. Svendsen full of nature-description, is a contemplation of this piece closes in an elysian soundworld, ‘where we with Romanticism in its expression. The central section of range of expression and great structural depth, but it is which is pure spontaneity, a torrent of poetry – is to composed a number of pieces for string orchestra during transitory life, hanging by a thread, of the intense joy of nature unite in wonder’. the Gavotte, called Musette, is underpinned by a drone played surprisingly rarely. The introductory phrase has a advance, then we must get rid of philosophy, and the that decade, and Grieg joined in what was an being part of the ‘great game’, and of the certainty of For the celebrations in 1884 of the 200th birthday of on an open fifth, as in folk music. The Air, in the key of chord-progression similar to that in the orchestral song sooner the better, in my view.’ international ‘trend’. His close contemporaries, the death. This spring will probably be the last the Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754), ‘Norway’s Molière’, both G minor, is the longest movement in the suite, and is Den Bergtekne (The Mountain Thrall, Op. 32 (1877-8) In 1903 Grieg got hold of the score of the Czech composer Antonín Dvo!ák (1841-1904) and the protagonist will ever see: the sound of the primitive Grieg and Svendsen composed cantatas, and in particularly inspired. The middle section of the [Naxos 8.570236]), and towards the end of the fourth Norwegian Suite, an orchestration of four of the Lyric Russian Peter Tchaikovsky (1840-93), each wrote a flute that he carved for himself ‘seems to lament’. The Denmark Niels Wilhelm Gade (1817-90) wrote his four- Rigaudon, also in G minor, is rather elegiac in its variation there is a long chord, marked to be played as Pieces for piano from his Op. 54 set, which the Serenade for Strings, in 1875 and 1880 respectively. nuances of colour, so typical of the way Grieg uses the movement suite Holbergiana, Op. 61 (1884). But it is chromaticism, while the main body of the movement loud as possible, with ‘many bowstrokes’ – again, just Hungarian-born conductor Anton Seidl (1850-98) had Most of Grieg’s string orchestra music dates from large string orchestra, are especially clear in the second the suite Grieg wrote the same year, Fra Holbergs tid, has subtle, feather-light instrumentation accompanying as in The Mountain Thrall: an exceptionally dramatic made for the New York Philharmonic in 1894.