Edvard Hagerup Grieg (15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907) was a Norwegian composer and pianist, widely considered one of the leading Romantic era composers, and his music is part of the standard classical repertoire worldwide. His use and development of Norwegian folk music in his own compositions put the music of Norway in the international spectrum, as well as helping to develop a national identity, much as Jean Sibelius and Antonín Dvorák did in Finland and Bohemia, respectively. Grieg is regarded as simultaneously nationalistic and cosmopolitan in his orientation, for although born in Bergen and buried there, he traveled widely throughout Europe, and considered his music to express both the beauty of Norwegian rural life and the culture of Europe as a whole. His Lyric Pieces a collection of 66 short works for solo piano, were published in 10 volumes, from 1867 (Op. 12) to 1901 (Op. 71) The entire collection includes several of his best known pieces, such as Wedding Day at Troldhaugen, March of the Trolls, To Spring and Butterfly. Indeed the eighth set, Op. 65, in six movements does have the famous Wedding Day At Troldhaugen as its final movement, surely one of his most immediate and famous works. Alongside this are From Early Years, a vibrant waltz, the small but moving Peasant’s Song, the chromatic harmonies of Melancholy, the elegant Salon, and finally the slow and serious Ballad. The surprising fact about these 66 Lyric Pieces is how they adapted completely from the piano to the 2 guitars almost without any problem at all. The occasional octave replacement, and the necessity of a key change in a number of the works was unavoidable but almost no actual change to the musical conception was necessary, thus giving the guitarists a very vivid and exact idea of the magic of Grieg’s compositions and their inherent beauty and individualism, whilst feeling entirely natural to play on the guitars throughout. Chris Dumigan April 2018
