Edvard Grieg was the most significant Scandinavian composer during the years leading up to the beginning of the twentieth century. He was a prolific composer of songs and music for the piano--small lyric compositions being his obvious forte. In addition to his songs, he wrote a large number of choral works, many for unaccompanied male voices, and some of them remain evergreen favorites. While he did compose in other genres, achieving notable success with his only piano concerto and his string quartet, they were exceptional. He was educated at the Leipzig conservatory, where his early models were Schubert and Schumann, and he spent much time in Copenhagen. >>>
Easily Grieg’s most famous work, it was composed in 1868, when the composer was only twenty-five years of age. Married the year before, he, his wife, and their two-month old daughter were in Denmark, escaping the more rigorous Norwegian climate. Grieg was an excellent pianist—it was a major focus of his life as a composer—and had the privilege of hearing Schumann’s piano concerto played by Schumann’s wife, the great virtuosa, Clara Schumann, while a student at the Leipzig conservatory. It has long been generally accepted that the Schumann composition informed much of the young Grieg’s concerto. With its multitude of attractive melodies and its dramatic musical rhetoric it became a Norwegian favorite almost immediately—although the rest of the world warmed to >>>
Edvard Grieg was the most significant Scandinavian composer during the years leading up to the beginning of the twentieth century. He was a prolific composer of songs and music for the piano, small lyric compositions being his obvious forte. In addition to his songs, he wrote a large number of choral works, many for unaccompanied male voices, and some of them remain evergreen favorites. While he did compose in other genres, achieving notable success with his only piano concerto and his string quartet, the latter were exceptional. He was educated at the Leipzig conservatory, where his early models were Schubert and Schumann, and he spent much time in Copenhagen. >>>
