6. Piano music.

Grieg was a fine pianist and appeared at his concerts both as soloist and as accompanist to his singers; understandably his large body of piano works occupies a position in his output comparable in importance to that of the songs. Among them his only completed concerto takes a special place. A work of youthful exuberance, it opens with an impetuous solo passage built of a descending 2nd followed by a descending 3rd; this melodic motif, which recurs throughout Grieg’s works (as in the String Quartet) is characteristic of Norwegian folk music and its borrowing typifies the pervasiveness of folk influence in his music. The concerto’s first movement is made up of seven different thematic ideas, and though some of them are motivically related, there is also much contrasting material. It is to this proliferation of attractive ideas that the work finally owes its great conviction and popularity.

Of Grieg’s works for solo piano and for piano duet, the most important is the Ballade in G minor op.24 (1875–6). It was composed two years before the quartet in the same key, and is closely akin to the later work in spirit. The Ballade is a set of variations on the folksong Den nordlandske bondestand (‘The Northland Peasantry’) from Lindeman’s collection. The theme is announced in a rich chromatic harmonization and is followed by nine distinct character variations, which illuminate various aspects of the folksong while retaining its formal structure. Variations 10 to 14 are freely based on individual motifs from the theme and are joined to form two dynamic waves; nos.10 and 11 lead directly into no.12, which presents a major-mode version of the theme, while nos.13 and 14 culminate in a climax which is suddenly broken off by a single deep bass note. This interrupted climax acts as a dramatic necessity; the concluding reappearance of the first part of the theme in its original form now has the sense of a tragic return to the starting point and gives the whole work a feeling of unresolved struggle. It is darkly coloured music, but glows with intensity and seems to bear witness to profoundly tragic events in the artist’s life. There are indications that Grieg considered the Ballade to be an unusually personal composition; he never played it at his concerts.

Another large-scale set of variations, Altnorwegische Romanze op.51 for two pianos (1891), is based on a folksong, Sjugur og trollbrura (‘Sjugur and the Troll-bride’), which is also taken from the Lindeman collection. It has some outward points of similarity to the Ballade, but its more reflective mood has failed to establish it in the concert repertory in either its original or orchestrated versions. Far more successful is the neo-Baroque suite From Holberg’s Time, composed in 1884 while Grieg was working on a cantata for the bicentenary of Holberg’s birth. In the suite’s five movements – Praeludium, Sarabande, Gavotte, Air and Rigaudon – Grieg skilfully adopted formal principles from an earlier period to create a charming work, equally popular in a version for string orchestra.

Many of Grieg’s best-known works are contained in the ten sets of Lyric Pieces, as well as in the Humoresker op.6, Folkelivsbilleder (‘Pictures from Country Life’) op.19, Stimmungen op.73 and several other collections of miniature character-pieces. Within the simple outlines of traditional small forms (ABA and especially the extended ABABA, often with varied reprises), he managed to create a wealth of mood-sketches. These pieces, along with the three sets of folksong arrangements opp.17, 66 and 72, span the whole of Grieg’s development as a composer for the piano.

Grieg, Edvard