![Edvard Grieg - Song Transcriptions (Volume II), op. 52 [With score] @DamonJHK](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/HaNzQMKLtO8/maxresdefault.jpg)
Uploaded September 2020 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
-Composer: Edvard Hagerup Grieg (15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907)
-Performer: Gerhard Oppitz
Piano Transcriptions of Songs (Volume II), op. 52, written in 1890
00:00 - I. Modersorg {A Mother's Grief} (from Op. 15/4)
03:21 - II. Det første møre {The first meeting} (from Op. 21/1)
07:08 - III. Du fatter ej bølgernes evige gang {The Poet's Heart} (from Op. 5/2)
09:12 - IV. Solveigs sang {Solveig's Song} (from incidental music: Peer Gynt)
13:31 - V. Kjærlighed {Love} (from Op. 15/2)
16:22 - VI. Gamle mor {The Old Mother} (from Op. 33/7)
-Composer: Edvard Hagerup Grieg (15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907)
-Performer: Gerhard Oppitz
Piano Transcriptions of Songs (Volume II), op. 52, written in 1890
00:00 - I. Modersorg {A Mother's Grief} (from Op. 15/4)
03:21 - II. Det første møre {The first meeting} (from Op. 21/1)
07:08 - III. Du fatter ej bølgernes evige gang {The Poet's Heart} (from Op. 5/2)
09:12 - IV. Solveigs sang {Solveig's Song} (from incidental music: Peer Gynt)
13:31 - V. Kjærlighed {Love} (from Op. 15/2)
16:22 - VI. Gamle mor {The Old Mother} (from Op. 33/7)
![Edvard Grieg - Song Transcriptions (Volume II), op. 52 [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/HaNzQMKLtO8/mqdefault.jpg "Edvard Grieg - Song Transcriptions (Volume II), op. 52 [With score]
-Composer: Edvard Hagerup Grieg (15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907)
-Performer: Gerhard Oppitz
Piano Transcriptions of Songs (Volume II), op. 52, written in 1890
00:00 - I. Modersorg {A Mothers Grief} (from Op. 15/4)
03:21 - II. Det første møre {The first meeting} (from Op. 21/1)
07:08 - III. Du fatter ej bølgernes evige gang {The Poets Heart} (from Op. 5/2)
09:12 - IV. Solveigs sang {Solveigs Song} (from incidental music: Peer Gynt)
13:31 - V. Kjærlighed {Love} (from Op. 15/2)
16:22 - VI. Gamle mor {The Old Mother} (from Op. 33/7)")
![Edvard Grieg - 25 Norwegian Folk Songs and Dances, op. 17 [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/HrmZMPhKj78/mqdefault.jpg "Edvard Grieg - 25 Norwegian Folk Songs and Dances, op. 17 [With score]
-Composer: Edvard Hagerup Grieg (15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907)
-Performer: Gerhard Oppitz
25 norske folkeviser og danser {25 Norwegian Folk Songs and Dances} for Piano, op. 17, written in 1869
00:00 - I. Springdans
00:53 - II. Ungersvennen {The swain}
01:47 - III. Springdans
02:31 - IV. Niels Tallefjoren
04:13 - V. Jølstring {Dance from Jolster}
05:45 - VI. Brurelåt {Wedding Tune}
07:34 - VII. Halling {Norwegian dance}
08:19 - VIII. Grisen {The pig}
09:08 - IX. Når mitt øye {Religious Song}
11:13 - X. Friervise {The Wooers Soong}
12:34 - XI. Kjempevise {Heroic Ballad}
13:39 - XII. Solfager og Ormekongen {Solfager and the Snake-King}
15:13 - XIII. Reiselaat {Wedding March}
16:11 - XIV. Jeg synger med sorgfullt hjerte {I sing with a sorrowful heart}
17:39 - XV. Den siste lørdagskvelden {The last Saturday evening}
19:23 - XVI. Eg veit ei lita jente {I know a little maiden}
21:12 - XVII. Kleggen og fluga {The Gadfly and the Fly}
22:39 - XVIII. Stabbelåten {Peasant Dance}
24:29 - XIX. Hølje Dale
25:23 - XX. Halling
26:01 - XXI. Saebygga {The woman from Setesdal}
27:06 - XXII. Kulokk {Cow-Call}
28:15 - XXIII. Såg du nokke til kjerringa mi {Peasant Song}
30:00 - XXIV. Brurelåt (Wedding Tune)
30:42 - XXV. Rabnabryllaup (The ravens wedding)
These delightful piano miniatures are based on L.M. Lindemans Aeldre og nyere norske fjeldmelodier (Old and New Norwegian Country Melodies). This selection displays the wonderful variety:
1. Spring Dance is a spirited, lilting melody in 3/4 with a skip on the last beat played over changing accompaniments: (1) a rhythmic drone, (2) contrasting accents (beats 1 and 3 in the first measure, 2 in the second), (3) chromatic descents, and (4) strong, thrilling bass chords for the last verse.
2. The Young Man Asked His Maiden states a question in a rhythmic minor which receives a sweet major-key reply interspersed with two more short, hesitant questions.
3. This Spring Dance has quite a different feeling from number 1. The spinning, cycling melody proceeds from quiet, sometimes sharp harmonies toward a wilder and abandoned double-speed coda.
5. The Dance from Jølster contains many coloristic effects, such as crystalline staccatos, offbeat accents, high treble woodwind-like parts, fast triplets over enthusiastic string-like open fifths, as well as extended endings, surprising sudden halts in the rhythm, and switches from duple to triple meter.
6. The Wedding Tune is a sweet, lyrical Allegretto pastorale which begins in C major and ends in A minor mixing happy and romantic (or, perhaps slight uncertainty about the future) emotions.
8. Oh, the Pig Had a Snout is a brief tune, in a combined comical and cantabile mood in G minor in triple meter.
9. When My Eyes is a touching spiritual song harmonized with beautiful modal harmonies.
10. Ole Once in Anger is a courting song with a jerky, drinking song rhythm to its wide-ranging minor-key melody that concludes in a deep, perhaps apologetic, baritone register.
12. Solfager and the Snake King, played in a moody Andante tempo, has a haunting minor-key melody with snaky chromatics that tells a tale even without words.
14. I Sing With a Sorrowful Heart is introduced by a distant minor third echoed three times in the high treble. The warm, middle register melody then begins with that same interval harmonized in rich but almost funeral chords played at a piano dynamic. The coda suddenly sings forth in a compelling cry that quickly calms into a resigned minor cadence.
17. In The Gadfly Said to the Fly, the first timid, thin-voiced (even insectile) statement is met with a full-voiced loud answer harmonized chromatically. The first voice inquires again twice, and the answers are more measured and simple.
21. The melody of The Woman from Setesdal is built on a simple two-measure rolling gesture that is treated as a very interesting imitative canon, the imitating voice sounding like a flute or birdsong in the higher registers.
23. Did You See Anything of My Wife? is a curious two-part song with a dotted, questioning, backbeat rhythm at the start, followed by quiet reply in longer tones and then a loud, aggressive version of that reply.
[allmusic.com]")
![Jean Sibelius - Pelléas et Mélisande Suite [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/I06-fQMxxeo/mqdefault.jpg "Jean Sibelius - Pelléas et Mélisande Suite [With score]
-Composer: Jean Sibelius, born Johan Julius Christian Sibelius (8 December 1865 – 20 September 1957)
-Orchestra: Danish National Symphony Orchestra
-Conductor: Leif Segerstam
Pelléas et Mélisande, suite for orchestra, Op. 46, written in 1905
00:00 - I. At the Castle Gate
03:59 - II. Melisande
08:51 - III. At the Seashore
11:47 - IV. Spring in the Park
13:59 - V. The three blind Sisters
16:32 - VI. Pastorale
18:40 - VII. Mélisande at the Spinning-Wheel
20:46 - VIII. Entracte
23:43 - IX. The Death of Mélisande
Pelléas et Mélisande, which had its premiere in 1893, was neither the first play by Belgian-born Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949) nor the most admired during his lifetime. Neither was it the only one reworked as an opera. But it produced musical interpretations by four celebrated composers within 12 years. After seeing the only Paris performance at the time, Claude Debussy fashioned his own libretto and within two years had completed his only opera in short score. Yet he held off scoring it until 1902, the year of its debut in the Opéra-Comique at Paris. In 1898, his senior colleague Gabriel Fauré was commissioned to write incidental music for a production of the play by Mrs. Patrick Campbell in English for London audiences. He hastily created 17 cues and asked his pupil Charles Koechlin to orchestrate them. Later on, however, Fauré scored three of them himself as a concert suite and added the Sicilienne ten years later. Next in line, Richard Strauss gave Arnold Schoenberg a copy of the play in 1902, which gave rise to a tone poem of Wagnerian length, chromatic diction, and orchestral density. The Vienna premiere in 1905 caused a near riot, but a 1911 revival validated Schoenbergs labyrinthine take on the text. The fourth famous composer to take on Pelléas et Mélisande was Sibelius, this time for a 1905 Helsinki production in Swedish that ran 15 performances, most of which he conducted. Sibelius had written his first theater score in 1898 and continued doing so until the end of his composing career in 1926 with music for 11 stage productions, including Hugo von Hofmannsthals Salzburg version of Everyman and Shakespeares The Tempest. Pelléas, though, was the first from which he extracted an orchestral suite. The nine movements do not follow Maeterlincks sequence (plot is a moot word for so vaguely impressionistic a stage piece), but capture its timeless character next only to Debussy in his masterpiece.
1. Sibelius begins At the Castle Gate (where the sun rises over the sea), an extraordinarily sonorous tone picture considering that the small orchestra has only two French horns and no other brass.
2. A sad-eyed portrait follows of Mélisande, the dramas amnesiac heroine found wandering in the forest by Pelléas dour brother Golaud, who brings her to their father Arkels castle. Like the Swan of Tuonela a decade earlier, she is characterized by an English horn.
3. At the Seashore is only 22 bars long, yet wells up scarily near the close (this was usually omitted by conductors ranging from Sir Thomas Beecham to Herbert von Karajan until the end of the twentieth century, when a young generation of Finns redressed the imbalance).
4. By a Spring in the Park is a sunlit waltz for the protagonists before they fall fatefully in love.
5. In the theater, Sibelius wrote The Three Blind Sisters as a strophic song (Thus they go up in the tower, where one of them hears a candle guttering), but assigned the melody to an English horn in the suite.
6. In Pastoral, two clarinets playing in thirds echo Golauds words, What a marvelous day! What admirable weather!
7. Mélisande at her Spinning-Wheel, next up, is a far cry from Faurés pretty music -ominous, metrically irregular music for oboe, clarinets, and agitated strings.
8. A brief Entracte (it introduced the plays fourth act) is a dappled miniature despite the descent into A minor midway.
This serves to heighten the poignance of No. 9, Melisandes Death, a six-minute elegy that fades to nothingness at the end.
[allmusic.com]")
![Etude mécanique No. 3 [My composition]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/IPO38DbJO64/mqdefault.jpg "Etude mécanique No. 3 [My composition]
Written in December 2017 - September 2019
+++Sorry for the bad sound quality
*** Please notice that I dont study composition, I compose only for fun.")
![Edvard Grieg - Violin Sonata No. 1, Op. 8 [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/JQgafTyXNsg/mqdefault.jpg "Edvard Grieg - Violin Sonata No. 1, Op. 8 [With score]
Composer: Edvard Hagerup Grieg (15 June 1843 4 September 1907)
Performers: Ivan Ženatý (violin), Antonín Kubálek (piano)
Sonata for Violin and Piano in F Major, op. 8, written in 1865
00:00 - I. Allegro con brio
09:57 - II. Allegretto quasi andantino
14:31 - III. Allegro molto vivace
It was almost certainly his friendship with Norwegian violin superstar Ole Bull that prompted Edvard Grieg to compose the first of his three violin sonatas, the Sonata for violin and piano No. 1 in F major, Op. 8 (1865). Grieg had met Bull many years earlier as a teenager with no formal musical training and the experience left a real mark on young Grieg. Indeed, it was because of Bulls encouragement that Griegs parents sent him off to conservatory. But perhaps more vital to the instigation of composing a violin sonata was a summer (1864) that Grieg spent at Ole Bulls home, playing through chamber music with the eccentric virtuoso.
For the casual music-lover, who in all likelihood knows Grieg only through the Peer Gynt music and the Piano Concerto, this early sonata will perhaps not sound completely foreign, but neither will it seem, at first hearing anyway, much like it was penned by the composer of those famous concert-hall works. For Grieg, chamber music was not a very comfortable area of toil, and throughout the Op. 8 sonata the voice of his model, Schumann, sings loud and true, nearly as loudly as does Griegs own. Still, Griegs gift for concocting lovely and compelling melodies, and for supporting them with flavorful and striking harmonies, make it a very worthwhile effort for all involved. Franz Liszt certainly admired the piece a great deal, having written to the composer in 1868, to tell him so. The sonata is in three movements: Allegro con brio, Allegretto quasi andantino più vivo Tempo I, and Allegro molto vivace.
[allmusic.com]
Original Audio: https://youtu.be/uBM574RFf9U")
![Edvard Grieg - 6 Elegiac Songs, op. 59 [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/JcYB-kOcjGM/mqdefault.jpg "Edvard Grieg - 6 Elegiac Songs, op. 59 [With score]
-Composer: Edvard Hagerup Grieg (15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907)
-Performers: Monica Groop (Voice), Roger Vignoles (Piano)
6 Elegiac Songs for Voice and Piano, op. 59, written in 1893-94
00:00 - I. Når jeg vil dø {Autumn Farewell; When I wish to die}
01:55 - II. På Norges nøgne fjelde {The Pine Tree; On Norways bare mountains}
03:28 - III. Til Én 1 {To Her 1}
05:38 - IV. Til Én 2 {To Her 2}
07:26 - V. Farvel {Farewell}
09:27 - VI. Nu Hviler du i Jorden {Now you are resting in the earth}")
![Edvard Grieg - 6 Songs, op. 49 [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/KTXAvPy-7Z0/mqdefault.jpg "Edvard Grieg - 6 Songs, op. 49 [With score]
-Composer: Edvard Hagerup Grieg (15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907)
-Performers: Monica Groop (Voice), Roger Vignoles (Piano)
6 Songs for Voice and Piano, op. 49, written in 1886-89
00:00 - I. Saa du Knøsen, som strøg forbi? {Tell me now, Did You See the Lad?}
04:14 - II. Vug, o Vove {Rock, o wave}
11:17 - III. Vaer hilset, i damer {Kind Greetings, Fair Ladies}
15:09 - IV. Nu er aftnen lys og lang {Now is Evening Light and Long}
17:39 - V. Jule-sne [Christmas Snow}
22:20 - VI. Foraarsregn {Spring Showers}")
![Francis Poulenc - Chansons villageoises [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/KiSiiIeCuxo/mqdefault.jpg "Francis Poulenc - Chansons villageoises [With score]
-Composer: Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (7 January 1899 – 30 January 1963)
-Performers: Pierre Bernac (Baritone), Francis Poulenc (Piano)
-Year of recording: 1950
Chansons villageoises, song cycle for voice and piano, FP 117, written in 1942
00:07 - I. Chanson du clair tamis
01:00 - II. Les gars qui vont à la fête
02:22 - III. Cest le joli printemps
04:50 - IV. Le mendiant
08:00 - V. Chanson de la fille frivole
08:53 - VI. Le retour du sergent
The aim of Maurice Fombeure (1906–1981) was to ‘refresh’ poetry and give it a ‘new virginity’. He wanted to ‘wash it, brush it up, take it for a walk in the grass, in the wind and the woods. Let’s listen to our hearts—the head has played its part and failed—we now need a little freshness on earth, poetry made of drops of water.’ In order to achieve this Fombeure invested his work with the wit and energy of popular music and old folksongs. In his nautically titled Chansons de la grande hune (‘Songs of the maintop’, 1942) Poulenc found poems ideal for his purposes. The poems are divided into two sections: the first, Chansons de la grande mer, is concerned with sailors and life on the ocean wave; the second is Chansons de la petite terre, eleven poems in the style of country folksongs on dry land, six of which Poulenc set to music. In JdmM he writes: ‘The texts by Fombeure evoke the Morvan where I have spent such wonderful summers! It is through nostalgia for the surroundings of Autun that I have composed this collection.’ This music comes across as a defiant celebration of the French way of life impervious to the German occupation.
Poulenc conceived Chansons villageoises as an orchestral cycle with quite a large percussion section, and it was first sung by Roger Bourdin in 1943 rather than by Pierre Bernac. The composer had envisaged a ‘heavy Verdi baritone (Iago)’ but later admitted that this momentary ‘infidelity’ to his favourite singer had been a mistake. Bernac recorded the piano-accompanied version of the cycle with the composer, perhaps because the vocal requirements of the set—subtlety of colour and diction, the ability to negotiate piano singing in the heights of the passaggio—are hardly associated with a heavy operatic voice. These mélodies, clever stylizations of chansons, are among Poulenc’s most diverting pieces of musical conjuring.
[hyperion-records.co.uk]")
![Edvard Grieg - Lyric Pieces (Volume V), op. 54 (Piano, Orch.) [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/KrqFvqvLSxM/mqdefault.jpg "Edvard Grieg - Lyric Pieces (Volume V), op. 54 (Piano, Orch.) [With score]
-Composer: Edvard Hagerup Grieg (15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907)
-Performer (Piano): Leif Ove Andsnes
-Orchestra (Pieces 1 - 4): Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra
-Conductor (Pieces 1 - 4): Ole Kristian Ruud
-Orchestra (Piece 6): Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra
-Conductor (Piece 6): Neeme Järvi
6 Lyric Pieces Book V, op. 54, written in 1889-91, orchestrated in 1904
Piano
00:00 - I. Gjetergutt {Shepherds Boy}
04:17 - II. Gangar {Norwegian March}
07:38 - III. Trolltog {March of the Dwarfs}
10:40 - IV. Notturno
14:58 - V. Scherzo
18:10 - VI. Klokkeklang {Bell Ringing}
Orchestra
22:47 - I. Gjetergutt {Shepherds Boy}
28:25 - II. Gangar {Norwegian March}
32:29 - III. Notturno
37:08 - IV. Trolltog {March of the Dwarfs}
40:39 - Klokkeklang {Bell Ringing}
It is the influence of folkloristic idioms which can be said to pervade many of Griegs works for solo piano, including the piano sonata in E minor, Op. 7, of 1865, the Pictures from Country Life, Op. 19, and of course, the ten books devoted to Lyric Pieces, some 66 miniatures in all, which were published in the years 1867 - 1901. It was, wrote Grieg, the celebrated Norwegian violin virtuoso Ole Borneman Bull who opened my eyes to the beauty and unspoilt nature of Norwegian music, although in these works, it would be hard to overlook the demonstrable impact that was exerted upon Griegs creative processes by the seminal German Romantic miniaturists Mendelssohn and Schumann, while Chopins expressive instincts are also closely mirrored.
Writing to his publisher, the head of Peters Edition Henri Hinrichsen, in 1901, the composer remarked that his Lyric Pieces were an intimate slice of life, and indeed, it would be very hard to challenge such an assertion. Book 5, published as Griegs Op. 54, comprises of the following numbers: 1) Shepherd Boy, 2) Norwegian March, 3) March of the Trolls, 4) Nocturne, 5) Scherzo, 6) Bell-Ringing.
Of particular interest is the third of the set March of the Trolls. As Joachim Dorfmüller has written, Trolls are quintessentially Norwegian creatures, and it was in their honour that Grieg and his wife Nina named the plot of land on which they built their house on the outskirts of Bergen in 1884 - 1885; Troldhaugen or Troll Hill. Op. 54 No. 5 is a scurrying, mercurial Scherzo reminiscent of Mendelssohns in A Midsummer Nights Dream or the Octet for strings. Op. 54 No. 6, Bell-Ringing, was written during 1891. As Dorfmüller points out, this was a full 16 years before Debussy composed his highly impressionistic tintinabulatory piece Cloches à travers les feuilles, from his second book of Images. Griegs previous example is also highly colored and often distinctly avant-gardist in feel. As Dorfmüller concludes, in his Lyric Pieces, and indeed in much of his remaining piano music, Grieg thrust aside tradition no doubt, in the final analysis, to his own astonishment as much as to that of his contemporaries and in his last great creative period he set out on a virtually impressionistic path.
[...] the idea to orchestrate some of the Lyric Pieces was not Griegs at all. In 1903 it came to Griegs attention that four pieces from the Opus 54 bunch had been orchestrated by the well-known conductor Anton Seidl; though enthusiastic about the idea, Grieg was not altogether satisfied by Seidls rather Wagnerian approach. After securing the legal rights from Seidls widow in 1904, Grieg proceeded to adapt the arrangements of three of them to better suit the translucent textures of the original piano ideas; the orchestration of the first piece in the suite is entirely Griegs own. (It is touching to note that Grieg handed over the 1,000 marks he received from the sale of the Lyric Suite to Seidls widow.)
[allmusic.com]")
![Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - String Quartet No. 17 The Hunt, K. 458 [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LH2_0q5UnLw/mqdefault.jpg "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - String Quartet No. 17 The Hunt, K. 458 [With score]
-Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791)
-Performers: Quatuor Mosaïques
String Quartet No. 17 in B-flat Major [The Hunt], K. 458, written in 1784 [Haydn Quartet IV]
00:06 – I. Allegro vivace assai
13:13 – II. Menuetto. Moderato
17:22 – III. Adagio
25:05 – IV. Allegro assai
Nicknamed the Hunt because of the hunting-call motif that opens the work, the B flat quartet is the fourth of six string quartets composed by Mozart between 1782 and 1785. Over nine years separate the first of this group, K. 387 in G, from its predecessor among the quartets, K. 173 in D minor, composed in 1773. Various factors may account for this long gap. On a practical level, Mozart had been much occupied with long journeys to Italy, Germany, and France. But the string quartet was also, at this time, a relatively new medium still in the process of development. From the genres beginnings in works that were little more than divertimenti, one man above all others was bringing the string quartet toward the point where it would ultimately be recognized as the most challenging of all forms of composition. That man was Joseph Haydn, whose long effort would be fully acknowledged by Mozart. Indeed, a direct impetus for Mozarts return to quartet writing seems to have come from Haydn, who in 1781 published a new set of six as his Op. 33. Mozart almost certainly first met Haydn shortly after settling in Vienna in 1781, and the two men soon established a friendship based on mutual admiration. As is known from a famous anecdote recorded by Irish tenor Michael Kelly, they also played quartets together with two other notable Viennese composers, Johann Vanhal and Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf. The inspiration provided by Haydn is clearly apparent in the quartets Mozart composed in the wake of these encounters. It is therefore hardly surprising that on completing six quartets of his own (K. 387, K. 421, K. 428, K. 458, K. 464, and K. 465) Mozarts publication would bear a famous dedicatory preface to Haydn that has led to them becoming somewhat confusingly known as Mozarts Haydn quartets. In the course of Mozarts touching tribute to the older master, he refers to the long and laborious endeavor that had gone into them, a unique admission from a man who normally composed with extraordinary facility, and a pointed reminder of the extreme challenge posed by this most pure of musical forms.
The B flat quartet was entered in Mozarts own thematic catalog on November 9, 1784, although he probably started work on it some 18 months earlier. Like all its companions, it is cast in four movements. The jaunty opening of the Allegro vivace assai with its hunting call prefaces a movement whose ease seems at odds with compositional problems, yet sketches show that it took the composer several attempts to satisfy himself. As in the case of all but two of the six quartets, the Menuetto is placed second, a brief movement not without its moments of gentle humor. The Adagio that follows is dominated by a long, decorated theme in the first violin and a quietly eloquent dialogue between violin and cello. The final Allegro assai returns to the opening movements mood of good-humored ease.
[allmusic.com]")
![Edvard Grieg - Lyric Pieces (Volume IX), op. 68 (Piano, Orch.) [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/MBGIL7A_ppU/mqdefault.jpg "Edvard Grieg - Lyric Pieces (Volume IX), op. 68 (Piano, Orch.) [With score]
-Composer: Edvard Hagerup Grieg (15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907)
-Performer: Håkon Austbø
-Orchestra: Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra
-Conductor: Ole Kristian Ruud
6 Lyric Pieces Book IX, op. 68, written in 1898-99, orchestrated in 1899
Piano
00:00 - I. Matrosernes Opsang {Sailors’ Song}
01:59 - II. Bedstemors menuett {Grandmother’s Minuet}
04:05 - III. For dine Fötter {At Your Feet}
07:11 - IV. Aften på Højfjeldet {Evening in the Mountains}
09:44 - V. Bådnlåt {At the Cradle}
12:05 - VI. Valse mélancolique
Orchestra
15:58 - Aften på Højfjeldet {Evening in the Mountains}
19:59 - Bådnlåt {At the Cradle}
The ninth book of Griegs Lyric Pieces were written in 1898 - 1899, and while the fragile state of the composers health was not great during this time, he was at least in these years stable and productive. In the early part of 1898, Grieg was chief organizer of a music festival in Bergen. Directly against the wishes of the festivals board of directors, and the advice of his closest friends, Grieg went to the trouble of bringing in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw under Willem Mengelberg to Norway. The ninth book of Lyric Pieces was complete by September 1899, as in a letter he records playing them in a rare public recital in Bergen; The little mountain piece sounded just the way I had imagined it. People continued to clap, but I did not do it da capo. Afterward I played one of the other pieces in the same volume: At the Cradle. Despairing of the Lyric Pieces and their unbridled popularity in letters of 1896, Grieg nonetheless seems to have come to terms with the new set by the time of its introduction in 1899.
Outside of the two pieces mentioned in Griegs letter, there are no real standouts in the ninth book; however, this group is remarkable in its consistency of style as a whole, and the pieces are relatively easy to play. These five pieces are all short, and the whole book takes less than 20 minutes to play, as compared to a half an hour for the sixth book. The opening Matrosernes Opsang (Sailors Song) is a stately march in cut time. Bedstemors Menuet (Grandmothers Minuet) is a skewed vision of an early nineteenth-century musical form, invaded by Griegs stylistic tendency towards repeating figures in octaves. For dine Födder (At Your Feet) is a warm, romantic fireside piece that captures a snapshot suggesting the contentment of a long-married couple. Aften på Höjfeldet (From the Mountains) is a stark impression of Norwegian folk melody that would be worthy of inclusion in Bartóks Mikrokosmos. More than half the piece is played as a solo melody in the right hand, and as Grieg suggests, a da capo repeat of the first section wouldnt really work. Bådenlåt (Cradle Song) is a truly lovely miniature that utilizes parallel harmony in a manner suggestive of French impressionism. The concluding Valse mélancolique likewise is French in style, but more in step with the practice of dIndy in its use of wandering, chromatic underpinnings and a heavy accent on the second beat of the bar.
[...] There are five compositions on Griegs works list having the title Bådnlåt, all essentially lullabies. Three are adaptations of folk songs, all appearing in his set of 19 folk song arrangements for piano, Op. 66 (1896 - 1897), and one is this effort from Book 9 of his Lyric Pieces series. The fifth Bådnlåt is a transcription of this piano piece for strings. Grieg also wrote five other lullabies (some as songs), demonstrating he was not only fond of the genre, but always highly skilled at it. While he lived another decade after writing this Op. 68 effort, he never wrote another lullaby. In a way, Grieg, generally upbeat and light in his works, was the perfect composer for this kind of music. Here he presents a lovely, quite simple melody that is instantly recognizable as his own, mainly owing to the subtle harmonies that impart a slightly exotic Nordic character to the dreaminess and innocence of the melody. The brief middle section is playful, though gently so, and after a return of the lovely main theme, the music quietly ends. Lasting about two-and-a-half minutes, this piece is yet another example of the composers melodic skills and deft ability to charm the ear with seemingly simple materials.")
![Gabriel Fauré - Masques et Bergamasques, Suite for Orchestra [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/MTjYifFRv0E/mqdefault.jpg "Gabriel Fauré - Masques et Bergamasques, Suite for Orchestra [With score]
-Composer: Gabriel Urbain Fauré (12 May 1845 – 4 November 1924)
-Orchestra: English Sinfonia
-Conductor: Sir Charles Groves
Masques et Bergamasques, Suite for Orchestra, op. 112, written in 1919
00:00 - I. Ouverture
03:49 - II. Menuet
06:50 - III. Gavotte
10:19 - IV. Pastorale
Faurés last, inwardly turning manner spare, abrupt, arching toward ever finer gradations of luminosity had been embarked upon for more than a decade when Prince Albert I of Monaco asked him in 1918 (at Saint-Saëns prompting) for a brief divertissement to be performed at the Monte Carlo theater, which would become known as Masques et bergamasques. In collaboration with theater director Raoul Gunsbourg and René Fauchois, librettist of Pénélope, Fauré was to provide music for a fête galant in the spirit of Verlaine, drawing largely upon his earlier works. In the upshot, only the orchestrated version of the mélodie Clair de lune, from 1888, contained verse by the Faun (as Verlaine was known to his café cronies), though the Pavane for chorus and orchestra of 1887 featured lines by Count Robert de Montesquiou deliberately imitative of Verlaines style. Madrigal for chorus and orchestra (1884) and the mélodie Le plus doux chemin (1904) to poems by Armand Silvestre dovetailed well with the spirit of the thing. The slender conceit of the scenario, in which the commedia del arte characters who flit through Verlaines early verse appear in person to observe and mock the eighteenth century lords and ladies accustomed to being entertained by them, owes as much to Watteau who inspired the décor as to the poet.
For the Overture and two orchestral numbers, Fauré revised movements of an abandoned symphony dating from 1869 his 24th year to which he added a Pastorale, the only newly composed music for Masques et bergamasques. The latter revives his galant style with a loving, old-masterly touch. While the Overture is not pastiche, the young Fauré was obviously moved by classical models Reynaldo Hahn disarmingly suggested Mozart imitating Fauré. Likewise, the Gavotte and Menuet were inspired by an even more remote era. Following the horrors of the Great War, and taken together, the oddments of this elegant trifle loomed larger than their sum. They still evoke a grand nostalgia, not merely for the belle époque, but for the eternally enchanted paysages that haunt Verlaines early verse. And the freshly felicitous first orchestral essays, indeed, seem predestined for just this use. The Pastorale was Faurés last orchestral work in its brief magic there is something of Prosperos Our revels now are ended. The Monte Carlo production opened April 10, 1919, scoring an immediate success, which led to it being re-staged at the Paris Opéra-Comique on March 4, 1920. As a theater piece, Masques et bergamasques has frequently been revived in France, while the suite of orchestral numbers drawn from it Overture, Gavotte, Menuet, and Pastorale has achieved an enduring popularity the world over.
[allmusic.com]")
