DownWithTyranny!: Sunday Classics preview: Marching trolls and other lyric subjects courtesy of Edvard Grieg

"A. Totter" gives an energetic performance of the "Trolls' March" from Book V of Grieg's Lyric Pieces. The A-B-A form (fast outer section, lyrical center section, fast outer section repeated) suited Grieg's musical tone-painting well and is used frequently in these structurally simple pieces.

by Ken

We could hardly make a greater leap than from the cosmic-scaled symphonies of Mahler to some of the most intimate miniatures in the musical literature, the Norwegian-born Edvard Grieg's Lyric Pieces. (I might note, though, that the Mahler Wunderhorn songs we sampled include some of the most exquisite of musical miniatures.)

Between 1867 and 1901, the meat of his creative years, Grieg (1843-1907) published ten books of Lyric Pieces -- most often six to a book, but ranging up to eight, for a total of 66. They became the musical repository of whatever happened to be on his mind: specifically Norwegian people, places, and moods, historical and mythological sketches, little nature poems, even tiny metaphysical queries. Some of them run under a minute; a very few go over the six-minute mark; three to four minutes is the typical range.

The pieces are relatively easy to play, which is why you'll see and (groan) hear tots grinding them out all over YouTube, but they're not at all easy to play really well. For starters, we're going to hear a more or less random selection of the pieces from the wonderful three-CD recording of all ten books of Lyric Pieces made by the distinguished British pianist Peter Katin in late December 1989 for the British Unicorn-Kanchana label. You won't hear anything flamboyant or spellbindingly original in the performances, but in miniatures like these you don't have the luxury of sort of ambling toward the goal, you've got to be dead on, and it would be hard to top the beauty and clarity of touch or the logic and elegance of phrasing served up by Katin. (For something closer to spellbindingly individual, down below we've got performances of two of the Op. 54 Lyric Pieces by the inimitable Arthur Rubinstein.)

Book I (Op. 12), No. 6: Watchman's Song

Peter Katin, piano (from Lyric Pieces, Vol. 1 -- see above)

The "Watchman's Song" has for me the timeless, or maybe outside-of-time, feeling of a medieval chorale, with the harmonies beautifully rung and balanced by our pianist.

Book III (Op. 43), No. 6: To Spring

Peter Katin, piano (from Lyric Pieces, Vol. 1 -- see above)

"To Spring" is a charming, breezy invocation, with delightfully beautiful voicing of the ethereal right-hand accompaniment (while the melody is in the left hand) of the main section, all relaxedly unforced in movement yet without dragging.

Book VIII (Op. 65), No. 6: Wedding Day at Troldhaugen

Peter Katin, piano (from Lyric Pieces, Vol. 3 -- see above)

Grieg had a singular flair for music for festive occasions, and for (I think) obvious reasons "Wedding Day at Troldhaugen" is one of his most-loved little pieces. Troldhaugen, by the way, was Grieg's home, in his native city of Bergen. (It's now a museum dedicated to the composer.)

Book X (Op. 71), No. 7: Recollection

Peter Katin, piano (from Lyric Pieces, Vol. 3 -- see above)

"Recollection," the last of the Lyric Pieces, is a lovely demonstration of how Grieg could make an abstract subject feel tangible. Actually, this piece literally recalls the very first Lyric Piece, the opening "Arietta" of Book I (Op. 12):

NOW WE'RE GOING TO HEAR A WHOLE SET . . .

of Lyric Pieces -- specifically, Book V (Op. 54), the set that contains the "Trolls' March" we saw and heard at the top of this post. Five out of these six pieces happen to have been orchestrated, and we're going to hear the orchestral versions too.

It wasn't Grieg's idea to orchestrate these pieces, but he did ultimately allow the orchestral versions to be published. The original orchestrations of Nos. 2-4 and 6 were undertaken by the Hungarian-born conductor Anton Seidl (1850-1898), who as a young man participated in the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876, and who went on to become a mainstay of the then-young Metropolitan Opera in New York and music director of the New York Philharmonic from 1891 until his death. The Seidl orchestrations were sent to Grieg, who was more than a little surprised, but apparently pleased enough to tinker with Seidl's orchestrations himself.

Eventually he discarded "Bell-Ringing," possibly because it overwhelmed the other pieces, or possibly because he felt its harmonic daring worked better on the piano, and by way of replacement he added his own orchestration of No. 1, "Shepherd Boy." A good case can be made that in all these pieces the piano originals surpass the orchestral versions in ingenuity and stimulation of the imagination. There's a reason why Grieg himself felt little impulse to orchestrate or otherwise arrange the Lyric Pieces.

So here are the piano originals of all six pieces from Book V, played by Peter Katin (from Vol. 2 of his complete traversal), plus bonus performances by Arthur Rubinstein of "Shepherd Boy" and our friend the "Trolls' March" -- a very speedy rendering. (Clearly Rubinstein was thinking smash-mouth "encore" piece. I'm assuming, by the way, that the Rubinstein performances, not sourced on the CD, are from his 1953 all-Grieg LP. I haven't traced any later recordings of them.) In addition, in the cases of the five numbers that were orchestrated, we hear an orchestral performance that's reasonably close in pacing to the Katin piano performance.

GRIEG: Lyric Pieces, Book V, Op. 54

Peter Katin, piano (from Lyric Pieces, Vol. 2). Unicorn-Kanchana, recorded Dec. 27-31, 1989

No. 1: Shepherd Boy