01	Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in A Minor, op. 16 - Allegro molto moderato			Lilya Zilberstein - piano			13:04
	02	Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in A Minor, op. 16 - Adagio - attacca			Lilya Zilberstein - piano			06:17
	03	Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in A Minor, op. 16 - Allegro moderato molto e marcato - Quasi presto - Andante maestroso			Lilya Zilberstein - piano			10:37
	04	In Autumn, op. 11 - Andante - Allegro agitato - Allegro marcato e maestroso						11:23
	05	Funeral March in memory of Rikard Nordaak - Lento						06:52
	06	Norwegian Dances - Allegro marcato						06:07
	07	Norwegian Dances - Allegro tranquillo e grazioso						02:30
	08	Norwegian Dances - Allegro moderato alla maria						03:16
	09	Norwegian Dances - Allegro molto						05:15

Edvard Grieg
Birth - Jun 15, 1843 in Bergen, Norway
Death - Sep 4, 1907 in Bergen, Norway

Period - Post-Romantic

Biography by David Brensilver
Composer Edvard Grieg, the icon of Norwegian music, left his home in Bergen, Norway to study at the conservatory in Leipzig. There he began his formal musical education under the auspices of Ignaz Moscheles (piano) and Carl Reinecke (composition). While in school, the young composer saw the premiere of his first work, his String Quartet in D minor, performed in Karlshamn, Sweden. Despite being diagnosed with a form of tuberculosis, which left him with only one functioning lung, Grieg graduated from the conservatory in 1862. The composer had an intense desire to develop a national style of composition, but recognized the importance of becoming well versed in the work of the European masters, and consequently relocated to Copenhagen, studying with Niels Gade. He was thus able to remain in Scandanavia, while working in a thriving cultural center. In 1867 against his family's better judgment, Grieg married his cousin Nina Hagerup, a talented pianist, but whose vocal abilities enchanted the composer even more. Shortly after their wedding, the couple moved to Oslo, where Grieg supported them by teaching piano and conducting. He and his wife traveled extensively throughout Europe and it was during a period of time spent in Denmark, the composer wrote his landmark opus, the Piano Concerto in A minor. The premiere was given in 1869, with Edmund Neupert as the soloist. The piece was received with an enthusiasm that would attach itself to the composer's reputation for the remainder of his career.

Grieg admired his literary contemporaries and forged a productive partnership with Bjornstjerne Bjornson, playwright and poet, with whom he staged performances of such works as Before a Southern Convert, and Bergliot. While Bjornson struggled with his output, Grieg met and befriended Henrik Ibsen. The forthcoming collaboration would prove significant for both, as Grieg would supply incidental music to Ibsen's Peer Gynt. The premiere was performed to critical acclaim and eventually led to Grieg's scoring of Peer Gynt into Suites 1 and 2 (1888 and 1893 respectively).

As a result of the success of Peer Gynt, Grieg enjoyed tremendous celebrity and continued to travel extensively, often meeting internationally renowned composers such as Tchaikovsky, Brahms, and Liszt, among others. In addition to a grant he was awarded in 1874, Grieg was able to earn the majority of his money by adhering to a vigorous schedule of recital tours. He served briefly as the music director of the Bergen Symphony Orchestra, and from 1880-82, held the same position at the Bergen Harmonien. In 1885, Grieg and his wife relocated once again, this time to his native Bergen, Norway, where he built their celebrated home, "Troldhaugen." The property, a popular tourist destination to this day, features a secondary building overlooking the water, which the composer used as his work area, as he could only work in solitude. He and his wife summered in Norway and departed each fall for European tours that would last the remainder of the year. Grieg also conducted extensively throughout his country.

Grieg was adored wherever he traveled and lived at a pace that would eventually catch up with him. Edvard Grieg died of chronic fatigue, with much credit given to his lifelong health problems, in his hometown of Bergen.

Norway's most famous composer, dedicated his career to the pursuit of a national sound. The respect he had for his predecessors illustrates the sincerity with which he worked towards this goal. He wrote in the Romantic tradition with, in his own words, the determination to "create a national form of music, which could give the Norwegian people an identity."






Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16

Composer - Edvard Grieg
Composition Date - 1868
Publication Date - 1872
Revision Date - 1907

Average Duration - 29:10

Composition Description by Roger Dettmer
Grieg was born on Norway's fjord-coast in the same year that Leipzig's storied Konservatorium opened under the direction of Felix Mendelssohn. By the time Ole Bull, the Norse Paganini, persuaded Grieg's parents to send their gifted 15-year old there for instruction, Mendelssohn was already dead 11 years. His successors were solid, German-schooled academicians whom Edvard hated, and against whom he rebelled. Ever after, he made five years in Leipzig sound like a prison sentence. That he learned so much from allegedly hidebound and uncaring teachers validates the soundness of their instruction. Most notably, Grieg absorbed the salient stylistic traits of Mendelssohn and Schumann (who taught there briefly before moving to Dresden). Indeed, his Piano Concerto could be called Schumannesque (likewise in A minor) without invalidating its Scandinavian character or Lisztian flourishes. Despite posthumous scorn for Grieg's large solo oeuvre during much of the twentieth century, his natural habitat was the keyboard. Grieg composed this music in 1868 for himself to play; however, Edmund Neupert played the first public performance in Copenhagen on April 3, 1869.

A government grant enabled Grieg to visit Italy in 1869, where he showed the work to Liszt at his residence near Rome. The kindly Abbe played it at sight with unconcealed pleasure (brilliantly, too, although for Grieg "rather too quickly" during the opening part). Liszt encouraged him to "go on, and don't let anything scare you," but tastelessly suggested that the second subject of the first movement be played by a trumpet instead of cellos. Grieg didn't restore it to the strings until his revision of 1905-06.

The concerto opens with a drum-roll and solo flourish, after which the winds play a simple, unsophisticated main theme that the piano preempts, and embroiders at length, Allegro, molto moderato. The cello subject (piu lento - a little slower) is contrastingly "soulful." Trumpets usher in the development, and later on the reprise. A solo cadenza comes just before the end. In the second movement, the key shifts from A minor to D flat major. This structurally uncomplicated Adagio in 3/8 time begins introspectively with muted strings. The piano rhapsodizes until a dramatically angular version of the main theme shatters the mood.

Eventually, calm is restored, and a quiet ending leads without pause to the third movement another quick-but-not-too-quick movement in A minor, additionally marked marcato, whose structure combines sonata and rondo. The piano introduces a main theme based on the 2/4 rhythm of a Norwegian folk dance, the halling. The second subject is quirkier and more elaborate but no less folk-like. The solo flute initiates a tranquil episode, after which the main theme returns for extended development. A short solo cadenza precedes Grieg's long-delayed transition from minor to major for yet another dance, this one in 3/4 time at an accelerated tempo. During a final cadenza, Lisztian bravura blows away any lingering traces of Schumann.



Norwegian Dances (4) for piano, 4 hands (or solo piano), Op. 35
Composer - Edvard Grieg
Composition Date - 1880
Publication Date - 1881

Average Duration - 17:10

Composition Description by James Leonard
The Norwegian Dances (4), Op. 35, (1883) of Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg (1845-1907) are for the most part based on tunes he found in Ludvig Mathias Lindemans' folk song collection Mountain Melodies Old and New. Like many sets of national dances from the nineteenth century - Brahms' Hungarian Dances and Dvorak's Slavonic Dances, for example - Grieg's Norwegian Dances were originally scored for piano duet to satisfy demand for music to be played in the home. They were later orchestrated by the Czech-born conductor Hans Sitt and it is in this guise that they are best known to later audiences.

All four of the dances are in simple ternary form. Three of the four - the first, third, and fourth - have quick outer sections and slower inner sections while the second reverses this order. Taken as a whole, the Norwegian Dances are in symphonic form, that is, the first and fourth dances (Allegro marcato and Allegro molto) are more expansive and more developed while the two central dances are like the Intermezzo's central movements of Brahms' symphonies with the second (Allegretto tranquillo e grazioso) taking the place of a slow movement and the third (Allegro moderato alla Marcia) serving as a march-like Scherzo a la the later march-scherzos of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6.

Like all of Grieg's best music, the Norwegian Dances are filled with achingly beautiful tunes set to supple chromatic harmonies, joyously festive tunes above cheerful rhythms, and the occasional faux-frightening tunes with skittering harmonies. At least two sections of the dances - the cheerful opening of the first dance and insouciant opening of the second - are nearly as well-known as the first Peer Gynt Suite or the Holberg Suite.