Grieg: Lyric Pieces IX (6), Op. 68

Alexander Goldenweiser was born in 1875 and studied at the Moscow Conservatoire with the great generation that included Rachmaninov, Scriabin and Medtner. Though a fine pianist, he quickly gravitated towards teaching and had an astonishing 55 year reign at his alma mater until his death in 1961. During this period he twice acted as the Conservatoire’s Director – from 1922-24 (as the first post-revolution director) and between 1939 and1942. Goldenweiser was to exert a profound influence upon more than 200 pianists among whom the most celebrated are Grigory Ginzburg, Samuil Feinberg, Rosa Tamarkina and Tatiana Nikolayeva (all of whom will be represented in this series) as well as Lazar Berman, Dmitri Bashkirov, Isabella Vengerova, Oxana Yablonskaya and Dmitri Paperno. During the last 15 years of his life Goldenweiser recorded quite prolifically but most of this work was for the radio and only released subsequent to his death. For LP he recorded all Rachmaninov’s two-piano music with his pupil Ginzburg, a fair bit of Russian chamber music and, as a solo player, the first complete recording of Grieg’s Lyric Pieces amongst other things, some of which are included here.

At the age of eighty six, Aldo Ciccolini is one of the Grand Masters of the piano to tirelessly ply the roads of a world career, never flinching in so doing, from the pace of life shaped by travel. This budget priced 6 CD set is testament the talents of this Grand Master and clearly demonstrates that he is still on the right road.

The majority of Grieg’s Piano Works, played by his compatriot, Norwegian Hakon Austbó - Received great reviews, among which a Diapason d’Or.

Although his best-known compositions remain the A minor Piano Concerto and the incidental music composed for Ibsen’s fantastical play Peer Gynt, Grieg’s main achievement remains the shorter pieces he wrote both for piano solo and for orchestra, together with a large quantity of lyrical songs that show a remarkable balance between singer and piano accompaniment and some of which have found a firm hold in the Lieder singer’s repertoire.