Lyric Pieces

Grieg, Edvard

album cover

Delicate and Poetic, Like a Song

Lullabies, dances, and caprices on such subjects as homesickness and memory, Edvard Grieg's Lyric Pieces are delicious miniatures. The Norwegian composer is known for his piano concerto, which is, on one level, similarly compact—a series of motifs that are cannily strung together into perfectly proportioned phrases. Here, there's no stringing—these brief investigations, which were published between 1867 and 1901, capture a moment and then move on. These pieces are not as dependent on structure as, say, Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words—they don't always follow AB song form. In Grieg, a terse expression of theme might be followed by a detour into a related tonal center, then a recapitulation. Just as often, though, Grieg doesn't even bother to circle around to the original theme. He simply finishes his thought and moves on.

To get an idea of Grieg's evocative compositional style, cue up the opening "Arietta," the most famous of the Lyric Pieces, and then its echo at the end of the disc, "Remembrances." The first expression is spry, and the later one is wistful, almost sad. Russian pianist Emil Gilels renders both with almost superhuman restraint, taking pains to make the common melody signify in vastly different ways.

Gilels understands the compactness of Grieg (1843–1907), who devoted much of his career to writing Norwegian art music inspired by folk forms. In these renderings, the compositions are beautiful and at the same time earthy, spiked with a zest for the tiny slivers of life. Claude Debussy once derided Grieg's music as "bonbons filled with ice," but in Gilels's clean passages there is also great warmth—an affection for the lyrical bent of the pieces, and overriding respect for the shards of poetry scattered inside the music.

Genre: Classical
Released: 1973, Deutsche Grammophon
Key Tracks: "Melodie," "Homesickness," "Arietta," "Remembrances."
Another Interpretation: Walter Gieseking
Next Stop: Felix Mendelssohn: Songs Without Words, Andras Schiff
After That: Irén Marik: From Bach to Bartók
Book Pages: 326–327