Five Lyric Pieces

Hjemve (Homesickness) Op.57 No.6 (1893)

Gade Op.57 No.2 (1893)

Bekken (Brooklet) Op.62 No.4 (1895)

Trolltog (Troll March) Op.54 No.3 (1891)

Klokkeklang (Ringing of Bells) Op.54 No.6 (1891)

Major contributions to the repertoire do not necessarily come in large sizes. The average length of Grieg’s Lyric Pieces is about three minutes but there are as many as sixty-six of them - published in ten books at irregular intervals over a period of thirty-four years - and they add up to a unique, even significant collection. While they are not virtuoso piano music, they are resourcefully written for the instrument and, although there are setbacks, they are ever more distinctive with every succeeding volume. Hjemve (from Book 6) is a basically simple but highly effective contrast between the lamenting voice of the outer sections in E minor and the brightly scored springdans in the upper half of the keyboard in the middle section. Gade (also from Book 6) is a beautifully written tribute to Grieg’s Danish teacher Niels Gade, who had died in 1890. As an adherent and colleague of Mendelssohn and Schumann, he inspired a piece more Leipzig than Norwegian in style but no less engaging for that.

Bekken (from Book 7) is one of the most evocative of Grieg’s nature studies, an agitated little piece that, unlike the regularly flowing Ved Gjaetle-Bekken in Haugtussa, runs an erratic course round obstacles to its cascading rhythms. Familiar from the orchestral arrangement in the Lyric Suite, Trolltog (from Book 5) is another case of extreme contrasts, the aggressive rhythms and scary colouring of the outer sections offsetting the exquisitely melodious middle section. Klokkeklang is one of the two pieces in Book 5 that Grieg did not orchestrate for the Lyric Suite. He couldn’t: it is pure, boldly conceived piano music, its clanging open fifths unthinkable in any other terms. To judge by Ravel’s early and similarly clangourous Entre Cloches for two pianos, Klokkeklang must have been one of the pieces the young composer heard Grieg play when they met in Paris 1894.