Essential Grieg
Any composer must find a true voice, and in the case of Edvard Grieg, that voice was the voice of Norway itself. Grieg was trained with German rigor in Mendelssohn's conservatoire but the inspiration for his music came from somewhere 'a thousand miles from Leipzig and its atmosphere': the spectacular and spacious natural scenery of Norway and the folk traditions that were embedded in it.
Read more…Grieg mostly wrote his own tunes. But he breathed the shape and mood of folk music from Norway into them, a small country 'full of mystery and promise' that showed little interest in rushing headlong into modernity. Like Mozart's, Grieg's music has an air of distilled purity that conceals its own craft. In the best performances, it sounds like the most natural thing in the world.