Grieg Piano Concerto - Herbert Schuch, piano - WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln & Eivind Aadland

This video provides impressions of the recording session of the SACD production with pianist Herbert Schuch, Eivind Aadland and the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln. Grieg’s Piano concerto is the center piece of Vol. IV of audite’s Grieg series. Edvard Grieg’s most popular work in combination with his least known piece: whilst the Piano Concerto in A minor was the 25-year-old composer’s breakthrough to international fame, he had decided to withdraw his symphony, written only a few years previously. Yet every page of the score - despite overt influences of Schumann, Gade and Mendelssohn - convinces, thanks to Grieg’s youthful inspiration and superb invention.
The fourth volume of audite's complete recording of Edvard Grieg's orchestral works with the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln and the conductor Eivind Aadland combines the most popular work by the Norwegian national composer with his least known: the Piano Concerto in A minor, performed here by Herbert Schuch, represented the 25-year-old Grieg's breakthrough to international fame and is one of a handful of great piano concertos on which every pianist is judged. In the concerto, the influence of Schumann, his great model (Grieg had, after all, studied in Leipzig), is combined with that of Norwegian folk music - for the first time in a work by Grieg these national elements can be detected, which enthused not only his compatriots but also his wider European audience.
In his Symphony in C minor, completed in 1864, however, hardly any Norwegian inflections can be traced: apart from Schumann, Grieg emulated the Danish symphonic composer Niels Wilhelm Gade, who had pressed his young colleague to adopt the genre. Although it was a remarkable proof of the 21-year-old's talent, Grieg was not entirely satisfied with his symphony and forbade any further performance. The work was not revived until 1980, when it was performed under adventurous conditions in the Soviet Union, upon which it was immediately recognised as an important milestone in the Scandinavian orchestral culture of the nineteenth century. Despite overt influences of Schumann, Gade and Mendelssohn, the score convinces, thanks to Grieg's youthful inspiration and superb invention.
recording date: December 9-13, 2013 (Symphonie)
February 24-26, 2014 (Piano Concerto)
audite: 92670
EAN: 4022143926708
www.audite.de/92670