Edvard Grieg is the most important Norwegian
composer of the later 19th century, a period of growing national consciousness.
As a child, he was encouraged by the violinist Ole Bull, a friend of his
parents, and studied at the Leipzig Conservatory at his suggestion. After a
period at home in Norway he moved to Copenhagen and it was there that he met
the young composer Rikard Nordraak, an enthusiastic champion of Norwegian music
and a decisive influence on him. Grieg's own performances of Norwegian music,
often with his wife, the singer Nina Hagerup, established him as a leading
figure in the music of his own country, bringing subsequent collaboration in
the theatre with Bjørnson and with Ibsen. He continued to divide his time
between composition and activity in the concert-hall until his death in 1907.
Orchestral Music
In addition to the two Peer Gynt Suites
and three pieces from Sigurd Jorsalfar, Grieg wrote one of the most
famous of all romantic piano concertos, completed in 1868. The Holberg Suite,
for string orchestra, celebrates the Scandinavian Molière, the Norwegian
playwright Ludvig Holberg, an almost exact contemporary of J.S. Bach and
Handel. The two Elegiac Melodies of 1881 are also for strings only, with
other arrangements of piano music, and the Lyric Suite, based on four
piano pieces of 1891, was orchestrated in 1904.
Chamber Music
Grieg's three violin sonatas remain a part of
standard romantic repertoire, revealing his mastery of harmonic colour in the
clearest of textures. The third of these, in C minor, was completed in 1887 and
is particularly striking.
Piano Music
As a pianist himself, Grieg wrote extensively
for the piano, excelling, in particular, in his ten volumes of Lyric Pieces,
and in other sets of short compositions for the instrument, often derived
directly or indirectly from Norwegian folk-music.
