Date of composition: 1868-1869
Premiere: 3 April 1869 at the Tivoli in Copenhagen under the direction of Holger Simon Paulli and with the soloist Edmund Neupert
Duration: 30 minutes
Performances by the Berliner Philharmoniker:
first performed on 12 December 1884, conductor: Karl Klindworth, soloist: Fritz Schousboe
In October 1858, the 15-year-old Edvard Grieg left his Norwegian homeland for Leipzig to study music theory and piano. He found the atmosphere of the large merchant city oppressive, and the rigid approach of the conservatory did not appeal to him. Yet one experience remained unforgettable: Grieg had the opportunity to hear Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto performed at the Gewandhaus, with Clara Schumann, the composer’s widow, as soloist!
Ten years later, when he composed his own Piano Concerto, Schumann’s work was an unmistakable model – not only because Grieg chose the same key of A minor. The opening in particular seems almost like a stylistic imitation. Schumann begins his concerto with a tutti “blow” from the orchestra, before the soloist plunges fearlessly into the depths with cascading chords. Grieg does almost the same – but takes it even further. He starts with a timpani roll, as in a circus, before the “tiger of the keys” leaps through the flaming hoop.
A more spectacular opening is hard to imagine. Yet after this, Grieg quickly moves on to his main theme. The rhythm may be march-like, yet it is to be played dolce, gently and tenderly. Above all, it is full of couleur locale, sounding rhapsodic and imbued with Nordic hues. This impression is further intensified when the piano freely elaborates on top of it. Much like in Grieg’s Lyric Pieces for solo piano, all kinds of mythical creatures seem to appear: elves and trolls, giggling in rapid grace notes or fluttering over the treetops in great leaps and bounds.
However, Grieg was not only a master of character pieces – he was also a gifted lyricist. In the second movement, the Adagio, the strings intone an almost endless theme: a serene, simple melody exuding bliss. The solo piano then lovingly embellishes it with quintuplets, sextuplets and delicate ornamentation. Grieg himself must have been an outstanding pianist, and in this slow movement, he was entirely in his element. The eminent Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick, who heard him perform his Piano Concerto, praised his playing for its “enchanting softness and grace”.
Yet Grieg was also capable of a completely different style – as he demonstrates in the Finale, taking up the rustic rhythm of the halling, a traditional Norwegian leaping dance. At times, he lets the soloist and orchestra stomp against each other – the piano on the accented beat, the orchestra on the unaccented. Nevertheless, even in this lively, folk-inspired finale, Grieg grants us a moment of repose. Here, he presents a deeply reflective passage, a hymn to creation: the solo flute plays a melody in the highest register, while beneath it, the strings whisper mystically, evoking sounds of nature.
It is these rhapsodic shifts between reverie and triumph, between dazzling virtuosity and simple songfulness, that make Grieg’s Piano Concerto so unique. Yet he himself doubted whether he was truly a great artist. “My music will be forgotten in a hundred years,” he once claimed. His Piano Concerto – and not that alone – has proven him spectacularly wrong.