The confidence of the solo writing and his handling of the orchestra are almost miraculous. Listening to it, it’s hard to believe that this was his first large-scale work with orchestra. Yet that ‘individuality’ he referred to permeates the piece, already a unique and instantly recognisable voice, marinated in his country’s folk tradition and synthesised with German Romantic practice. So, much of this work, soon to be seen as quintessentially Norwegian, was written in Denmark, at least a year before Grieg came into close contact with Norwegian folk music. The idea of composing a piano concerto was already firmly planted in his mind and his friends found him a room with a piano at Mothsgården in Søllerød, about 20km north of the city. Having married his cousin (the talented singer Nina Hagerup) in 1867, the following summer he went to visit his wife’s family in Copenhagen, to present their newborn child, Alexandra. Equally significantly, during his time there (1858‑62), he heard Clara Schumann play her late husband’s Piano Concerto in A minor, a work which, as we shall see, made a profound impression on him.Īfter Leipzig, Grieg made his base not in his native Norway but Denmark. Naturally, I did learn something there, but my individuality was still a closed book to me.’ Whatever else, he certainly learnt how to orchestrate, as demonstrated in the Piano Concerto’s score. Grieg studied, reluctantly, at the Leipzig Conservatory (Arthur Sullivan was a fellow student), telling his biographer in 1881: ‘I must admit, unlike Svendsen, that I left the Leipzig Conservatory as stupid as I entered it. The work's originsīut first let us put this much-recorded (over-recorded?) work in context. Competing against it for the palme d’or will be, inter alios, Dinu Lipatti (of course), Stephen Kovacevich and four more recent recordings, all of them memorable in their own way, all of them having a rival: the very first complete recording ever made of the work. So, faced with making this impossible assignment, I shall break convention and begin with a teaser: I think I already know which recording will be the winner. One can already see the letters arriving in the Editor’s in-tray: ‘How could he possibly have left out so-and-so?’ ‘The credibility of this survey has been seriously compromised by the omission of such‑and‑such.’ Some would say that to compare them is a foolhardy task, one that’s impossible to accomplish successfully given the wordage granted by this magazine and the lifespan of the reviewer. There are currently more than 400 recordings available of Grieg’s Piano Concerto, different either by soloist, coupling or date of recording (there are those who have recorded the work more than once). Edvard and Nina Grieg, 1898, by Peder Severin Krøyer (1851-1909) – Grieg composed the Piano Concerto the year their daughter Alexandra was born (Bridgeman Images)
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