Anybody Like Classical Music?

[oil&gas]

In the days I was growing up as a budding classical music
lover Peer Gynt suite was mainly regarded as a piece for
easy-listening program performed in concerts catered
to beginning classical music listening. I guess conductors
in general deemed the piece shallow. It took a terrifying
performance at the hands of Sir Thomas Beecham for me
to experience this music like it is a revelation.

 

[Zoot Allures]

In the days I was growing up as a budding classical music
lover Peer Gynt suite was mainly regarded as a piece for
easy-listening program performed in concerts catered
to beginning classical music listening. I guess conductors
in general deemed the piece shallow. It took a terrifying
performance at the hands of Sir Thomas Beecham for me
to experience this music like it is a revelation.

I find the beginning very powerful , even scary, in its delicacy

Amazing piece of composition must have been emotionally draining for Grieg



"When Ibsen asked Grieg to write music for the play in 1874, he reluctantly agreed. However, it was much more difficult for Grieg than he imagined, as he wrote to a friend:

"Peer Gynt" progresses slowly, and there is no possibility of having it finished by autumn. It is a terribly unmanageable subject.
— Edvard Grieg (August 1874)[3]

Nina Grieg, his wife, wrote of Edvard and his music:

The more he saturated his mind with the powerful poem ( the play "Peer Gynt" was written in verse not prose) the more clearly he saw that he was the right man for a work of such witchery and so permeated with the Norwegian spirit."

 

[oil&gas]

Butterfly lovers violin concerto --- final movement