Classical Music

As Paul Crossley says, "Choosing a group of Grieg Lyric Pieces is not easy - they are that good. Even when I had recorded them, there were more than would fit on one CD, so 'culling them' was even worse. The pieces were published as 10 separate books, so I wanted to include at least one piece from each (if I seem to favor Book 3, Op. 43, it does have some of the best!), and I have listed the pieces in chronological order because there is a distinct emotional journey to be followed."

Grieg was the first great composer in the late 1880's to travel around Norway collecting folk tunes from the rural population and these proved to be a genuine source of inspiration to him. For John McCabe, as his original note for these recordings makes clear, Grieg was a far more significant figure than popular appreciation would suggest and these recordings came as quite revelatory in the early 1980's to wider audiences outside of the inner circle of specialists in Norweigian music.

� The idea of malinconia in the 19th c. covered a myriad of romantic notions, so to simply translate it as "melancholy" does the term injustice. � It subsumes many other emotional states as well - dejection, gloom, unknown sadness, desperation, depression and even frustration. Each language has evolved it's own terms, and interpretations differ from region to region. � Malinconia in sunny Italy or Spain is quite different from melancholy in Norway and in Finland, with their long, harsh winters. � The Nordic variant is expressed here in various musical examples.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Mesmerising playing from a young pianist who captures the essence of Grieg’s genius

Let me put my cards on the table and say that Katya Apekisheva is a young pianist who has already achieved artistic greatness. Not even Gilels, in his legendary DG Grieg recital, played more magically or, astonishingly, with greater finesse. How thrilled Irina Zaritskaya, Apekisheva’s teacher and my much-missed jury colleague, would have been if she had lived to hear the fruit of her work with this profoundly gifted artist. A sonority of beguiling warmth and refinement and a rare poetic empathy quickly make you abandon paper and pencil and listen mesmerised as Apekisheva captures the very essence of Grieg’s genius. Here, in her mixed programme, she tells you with an often painfully beautiful and unforced eloquence of how Grieg’s romantic temperament was easily clouded by depression and unease, of the way, for example in “Homesickness” and “Vanished Days”, a heartbreaking state of mind is only temporarily modified by memories of happier times. In the Aria from the Holberg Suite she is deeply sensitive to the way Grieg’s love and respect for the 18th century is coloured by a near-Franckian chromaticism and dark introspection. These works and everything else on this beautifully recorded album suggest an artistic fervour and commitment given to very few in any generation.

The sense of the Lyric Pieces as Grieg’s confessional diary is everywhere in Apekisheva’s recital, an inwardness and vision less evident in Daniel Propper’s bracing recording of four books of the Lyric Pieces. Nimble-fingered and musicianly, this Swedish-Viennese pianist, who now makes his home in Paris, shows Grieg’s art evolving from simple beginnings into a world of increasing complexity and harmonic richness. His “Little Bird” (from Op 43) blithely chirrups in a manner far removed from Messiaen’s more spiritual feathered friends, and his way with “Erotic” from the same book achieves a fine sense of how outward contentment abruptly changes to emotional instability. In “Butterfly” he hardly matches Eileen Joyce’s incomparable nuance and vivacity (Testament), yet these finely recorded performances are an admirable antidote to all possible sentimentality.

-- Bryce Morrison, Gramophone [9/2008]

Classical Music

The poet Henrik Ibsen and Edvard Grieg met in Rome in 1866. At this time, Ibsen was working on the dramatic poem "Peer Gynt" based on Norwegian fairy tales by Peter Christen Asbjornsen. Ibsen reworked it into a stage play and commissioned Grieg to write the music for it. The premiere took place on 24 February 1876. A few years later, Grieg used this music to create two purely orchestral suites, which are among the best-known works of Romantic music - and finally a very colourful and atmospheric arrangement for four-hand piano. Grieg was inspired to write his Piano Concerto in A minor op.16 as a student when he heard Clara Schumann play her husband Robert's piano concerto in Leipzig in 1858. He became a great admirer of Schumann. Grieg chose the same key as Schumann, A minor, for his own piano concerto, which was written 10 years later in Denmark. The premiere in Copenhagen in 1869 was enthusiastically celebrated. When E. Grieg met Franz Liszt in Rome in 1870, the latter played his piano concerto - a great honour and joy for Grieg - and the piano concerto and the two Peer Gynt suites are among the most beautiful and popular piano works of Romantic music. Margarita Hohenrieder have known the Icelandic composer Hjalmar Helgi Ragnarsson and his music for several years. She became acquainted with his piano pieces through his sister, her long-time friend, the pianist Anna Ragnarsdottir-Hoffmann. She was also the wife of her former teacher and well-known piano virtuoso Ludwig Hoffmann. Hohenrieder herself was looking for several pieces specifically for the left hand at the time: she was planning joint performances entitled "2 linke Hande " (2 left hands) together with the painter Bernd Zimmer. While Bernd Zimmer painted a picture live in front of an audience using only his left hand, Margarita Hohenrieder played pieces for the left hand. It is a creative and unique project. Hjalmar Helgi Ragnarsson wrote the left-hand piece "Stilla" for her, which for the artist on a trip to Iceland was a fascinating and mysterious reflection of the mostly light green moss-covered volcanic landscape with it's glaciers and the endless expanse and silence. When she played Stilla, she even felt as she can briefly see the northern lights again in some places. Mrs. Hohenrieder first heard the Finnish-born pianist Antti Siirala as a juror at the 1997 International Beethoven Competition in Vienna. He was 17 years old at the time and won first prize. He is now her colleague at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich.

All the arrangements on this CD are by Dan Willett who has been a member of the University of Missouri-Columbia music faculty since 1982. He is a member of the Missouri Quintet which is the woodwind quintet-in-residence at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Fine Arts. Since its formation in 1978, the Quintet has presented recitals throughout the nation including Weill Hall (formerly Carnegie Recital Hall) debut to favorable critical review in 1989.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music