Grieg: Complete Symphonic Works Volume 4

Grieg's most popular piece alongside his most forgotten, the amiable Symphony he withdrew soon after it was written. The Concerto performance lacks fire, but it's an agreeable combination. — BBC Music Magazine, November 2014, 3 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 13th Oct 2014
Catalogue No: AUDITE92670
Label: Audite
Series: Grieg Complete Symphonic Works
Length: 62 minutes

Grieg: Symphony in C minor

Work length32:35

$8.00

$10.35

West German Radio Symphony Orchestra
Eivind Aadland
Recorded: 9-13 December 2013
Recording Venue: Philharmonie, Cologne, Germany

I. Allegro molto

Track length12:31

$3.00

$3.85

II. Adagio espressivo

Track length7:21

$2.00

$2.60

III. Intermezzo

Track length4:51

$1.00

$1.30

IV. Finale: Allegro molto vivace

Track length7:52

$2.00

$2.60

Grieg: Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16

Work length30:01

$7.00

$9.00

Herbert Schuch (piano)
West German Radio Symphony Orchestra
Eivind Aadland
Recorded: 24-26 February 2014
Recording Venue: Philharmonie, Cologne, Germany

I. Allegro molto moderato

Track length12:57

$3.00

$3.85

II. Adagio

Track length6:46

$1.00

$1.30

III. Allegro moderato molto e marcato

Track length10:18

$3.00

$3.85

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The fourth volume of Audite’s complete recording of Edvard Grieg’s orchestral works with the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln and Eivind Aadland combines the most popular work by the Norwegian national composer with his least known. The Piano Concerto in A minor, performed here by Herbert Schuch, represented the 25-year-old Grieg’s break through to international fame and is one of a handful of great piano concertos on which every pianist is judged. In the concerto, the influence of Schumann, his great model (Grieg had, after all, studied in Leipzig), is combined with that of Norwegian folk music – for the first time in a work by Grieg these national elements can be detected, which enthused not only his compatriots but also his wider European audience. In his Symphony in C minor, completed in 1864, however, hardly any Norwegian inflections can be traced: besides Schumann, Grieg emulated the Danish symphonic composer Niels Wilhelm Gade, who had pressed his young colleague to adopt the genre. Although it was a remarkable proof of the 21-year-old’s talent, Grieg was not entirely satisfied with his symphony and forbade any further performance. The work was not revived until 1980, when it was performed under adventurous conditions in the Soviet Union, upon which it was immediately recognised as an important milestone in the Scandinavian orchestral culture of the 19th century.

Reviews

November 2014

Grieg's most popular piece alongside his most forgotten, the amiable Symphony he withdrew soon after it was written. The Concerto performance lacks fire, but it's an agreeable combination.

December 2014

a fresh, lightly sprung performance that avoids any inappropriate feelings of portentousness and highlights the mazurka-style third movement as the most characteristic in terms of its thematic material....[in the Piano Concerto] again Aadland and his Cologne players provide an excellent account of the orchestral score, supportive of Schuch and distinctive on its own terms.

December 2014

Schuch, with the full support of the orchestra and conductor, gives a fresh and flowing, feisty even, account of music easy to take for granted. There is much here that is gentle and tender, too, and the slow movement is especially soulful, beautifully brought off, and the finale has an invigorating impetuousness as well as idyllic romance and final triumph. Throughout, a positive collaboration informs this honest outing for such a familiar concerto.

Grieg: Complete Symphonic Works Volume 4

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