All recordingsPrices shown exclude VAT. (UK tax is not payable for deliveries to United States.)
See Terms & Conditions for p&p rates. | |  | Grieg: Holberg Suite, Lyric Suite & Norwegian Dances
“this is still as fresh and vivid a collection of Grieg's orchestral pieces as you're likely to find, with the Gothenburg orchestra in fine form.” BBC Music Magazine, June 2013 ***** | 
| | | (Sorry, download not available in your country) | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. |
|
|
| |  | Grieg: Famous Orchestral Works
“strong, sinewy performances of Holberg and Peer Gynt suites, and the Symphonic Dances. Garrick Ohlsson is imperious in a tensile Piano Concerto.” BBC Music Magazine, June 2012 **** | | | (also available to download from $21.00) | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. (Available now to download.) |
|
|
| |  | Grieg: Music for String Orchestra
On this disc, Richard Tognetti and the Australian Chamber Orchestra play string works by Edvard Grieg. The ACO perform perennial favourites such as the Holberg Suite and the two Elegiac Melodies, Grieg’s own orchestrations of two of his best-loved songs: Last Spring and The Wounded Heart. The programme also includes Richard Tognetti’s adaptation of String Quartet No.1 and the ravishingly lyrical piano composition Erotikk from the composer’s celebrated collection of Lyric Pieces. Previous recordings with Tognetti and the ACO on BIS including Mozart’s violin concerti (BISSACD1754 and BISSACD1755), have been met with critical acclaim: Gramophone’s described the team as ‘an outstanding band’ with ‘a keen individual and collective feel for style and character’, and The Observer praised their ‘gloriously exciting, tangy edged, alert and playful sound.’ “Tognetti's masterstroke is to have fully assimilated all the characteristics of Grieg's scoring...Transferring this procedure to the Quartet serves to enhance dramatic impact on its music narrative...The Australian Chamber Orchestra delivers playing of incredible passion and precision. Tognetti's inspired direction brings every movement to life...A triumph in every respect.” BBC Music Magazine, July 2012 ***** “The Australian Chamber Orchestra is renowned for its crisp, clean playing, superb ensemble and intonation, and vivacious style...[The Elegiac Melodies and Holberg Suite] have dozens of rivals but, while one might find equally fine renditions, I doubt there are many better ones. Excellent sound, as usual from this label.” Gramophone Magazine, August 2012 “[the String Quartet is] a striking piece, driven and agitated on the one hand, sweetly lyrical on the other. The performers give it vitality and beauty and a programmatic narrative which compelling. The original solo lines are sometimes left as they were, rather poignantly so in the dramatic first movement...the Australians offer a spirited and sensitive account [of the Two Elegiac Melodies].” International Record Review, June 2012 | | | (also available to download from $10.50) | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. (Available now to download.) |
|
|
| |  | Grieg - Orchestral Music Volume 6Music for String Orchestra
Grieg’s beautiful works for string orchestra often owe their origin to poetic inspiration or to mountain vistas. Some were based on piano originals, including the Holberg Suite, a masterpiece of invention. All of these pieces show Grieg’s assimilation of Norwegian folk culture and his lyrical mastery, through which he sought to ‘give expression to the hidden harmonies in our folk melodies’. Volume 4 in this series (8570236) was described as containing ‘performances as fine as any in the catalogue. These are gorgeous, perfectly paced and thrillingly recorded’. (ClassicsToday.com) “there's an edge to their tone that belies unfavourable comparisons with salon music. They also capture the vocal quality underpinning the Two Elegiac Melodies, and the folk music background to movements such as 'Norwegian' from Two Melodies for String Orchestra.” Classic FM Magazine, February 2012 **** | | | (also available to download from $6.00) | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. (Available now to download.) |
|
|
| |  | Grieg: Complete Symphonic Works Volume 2
This second volume, in a five-part series of the complete symphonic works with Eivind Aadland and the WDR Sinfonieorchester contains the works for string orchestra: a genre which Grieg mastered like no other, chiefly arrangements of songs and piano pieces. Where the song arrangements of the Elegiac Melodies Op. 34 and the Two Melodies Op. 53 were a form of ‘export edition’ for non-Scandinavian countries (where they were extremely popular, even during Grieg’s lifetime), the famous suite From Holberg’s Time Op. 40 is a homage to Ludvig Holberg, the caustic ‘Molière of the North’, whose 200th birthday was celebrated in Bergen in 1884. For this occasion, Grieg composed a suite ‘in the old style’ on dance forms of the late baroque (Holberg’s own time) without, however, denying his own, romantic style. The late Nordic Melodies Op. 63 were written by the 51-year-old Grieg who was touring internationally as a conductor and who, in the absence of major works, broadened his repertoire with smaller pieces. “The flavour of this music is in my blood”, says the conductor Eivind Aadland, who grew up in Grieg’s hometown of Bergen and who today is an international artist. Aadland was chief conductor and artistic director of the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra from 2003 until 2010 and has also worked with many other Scandinavian, European and international orchestras. He initially studied the violin with Yehudi Menuhin. From 1981 until 1989 he was concert master of the Bergen Philharmonic and from 1987 until 1997 music director of the European Union Chamber Orchestra. He subsequently devoted himself fully to his conducting career and studied with Jorma Panula. “A happy star reigned over Cologne two autumns ago when violinist-turned maestro Eivind Aadland recorded his cycle of Grieg symphonic works with the city's WDR orchestra...the bite and bounce of the German orchestra's playing is remarkable for its apparent ethnicity...Almost singlehandedly these days [Aadland] continues to make the case for Grieg as serious orchestral writer.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2011 | | | (also available to download from $10.50) | Usually despatched in 3 - 4 working days. (Available now to download.) |
|
|
| |  | Grieg - Music for String Orchestra
Oslo Camerata, Stephan Barratt-Due “The Holberg music is most collectable… it has a winningly 'live' feel, if not the last degree of pinpoint ensemble. Of especial merit among the accompanying pieces are moving renderings of the familiar Elegiac Melody 'Last Spring' and the large-scale Nordic Melody.” Gramophone Magazine, September 2006 | | | (also available to download from $6.00) | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. (Available now to download.) |
|
|
| |  | The Very Best of Grieg
and movements from other works
| |
|
| |  | Grieg - Music for String Orchestra
“…the engineering… is exemplary in every way, conveying the warm acoustics of Bergen's Grieg Hall with thrilling presence. …playing so enchantingly musical that occasionally one might have thought Barbirolli was at the helm.” BBC Music Magazine, February 2006 **** “Bergen musicians have lived with these scores since their creation and all the performances here, unfussily recorded in the rich, woody acoustic of the city's Grieg Halle in June 2004, have a relaxed, idiomatic naturalness in their virtuosity.” Gramophone Magazine, March 2006 “This is simply the most beautiful recording of Grieg's string music in the catalogue and one of the most beautiful and realistic recordings of strings we have yet heard...The wonderfully vital account of the Holberg Suite is unsurpassed...The surround sound is in a class of its own.” Penguin Guide, 2011 edition | | | (also available to download from $10.50) | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. (Available now to download.) |
|
|
| |  | Grieg: Works for Piano, Vol. 3
Antonio Pompa-Baldi (piano) | |
|
| |  | King Frederik IX conducts Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra
| | | (also available to download from $21.00) | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. (Available now to download.) |
|
|
| |
|
Penguin Guide