LDSM

Grieg found his true voice as a song composer only when he discovered the potential of Norwegian, rather than German, poetry. He had a particularly fruitrul relationship with Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, whose Fra Monte Pincio inspired what proved to be one of his most successful songs in Norwegian, in spite of its Roman settings and its skittish little episdoes. in the popular Italian style. Althugh he rarely set German verse after his student years, he did assemble a set of Sechs Lieder, including the harmonically sophisticated Dereinst, Gedanke mein, for the Swedish soprano Ellen Gulbranson, who had a taste for the German repertoire. The contrastingly simple Zwei braune Augen is a German translation of To brune øje from Grieg’s first set of songs in a Scandinavian language, Hjertets melodier, to words by Hans Christan Andersen.

Grieg wrote two sets of songs to words by his friend John Paulsen with whom, though a poet of nothing like the stature of Bjørnson or Ibsen, he felt such an affinity that could invest a slender little poem like Til En with surprising passion. Guten Morgen is another German translation of a song originally written in Norwegian, God morgen, which is a particularly attractive setting of words from Bjørnson’s Fiskerjenten (The Fisher Maiden). As for En Drom, it is a Norwegian version of one of the German songs, Ein Traum to words by Bodenstedt, from the same collection as Dereinst, Gedanke mein. In Norwegian or German, it is an irresistably spontaneous musical inspiration.