Originally composed for piano, this is one of Grieg's many "lyric pieces." I find it really beautiful, there's fantastic use of minor 7th chords that give this piece a tonality characteristic of a lot of Grieg's work, as well as the motif of 5ths which Grieg used very frequently to give his music a distinctively Norwegian style.
Richter's interpretation of the piano solo version found here.
Performance of the subsequent orchestral arrangement by Grieg found here.
As usual, Richter offers one of the best interpretations I can find, despite uncharacteristic technical lapses... just do your best to ignore them. Most other interpretations are either utterly unmusical or laughably fast... I'm pretty sure that stems from a notorious recording of this piece from Grieg himself (on a piano roll) where he played very quickly because there was only 3 minute's worth of recording "space" (I'm pretty sure that can also be found on Youtube). Oh well.
1 comment:
I really like that picture! Is that really Grieg? I don't think I've ever seen a picture of him.
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