Grieg: Lyric Pieces

Opis

Grieg: Lyric PiecesOpis:Product Description Since the dawn of the gramophone era Griegs Lyric Pieces have attracted the greatest pianists to the microphone. Their individual brevity played a part in this, of course, but rather more so did their intellectual transparency. For this new recording Stephen Hough has chosen twenty-seven (of the sixty-six), a generous selection encompassing every nuace of emotion, every tone of pianistic mastery. Review It has been 40 years since Deutsche Grammophon issued one of its most surprising best-sellers of all time, a selection of delicate piano leaves by a Norwegian composer famed for orchestral thunder. No-one expected the Russian pianist Emil Gilels to show up in Berlin with Grieg's music in 1974, and the pianist complicated matters further by refusing to say in advance which pieces he was about to play and in what order. The resultant album went on to become a legend. Four decades later, a British pianist with a mind of his own has set about the pieces in a different order, not all the same ones and from a contemporary perspective. Stephen Hough has a heavier touch than Gilels, more in keeping with Grieg s marching trolls and mountain kings. He 's also good at storytelling in pieces like Solitary Traveller and Wedding Day at Troldhaugen , though I m not quite sure what s meant to be going on in the one called 'Erotikon' (which Gilels prudishly omitted). There is any amount of magic in these miniatures and an infinite variety of mood in Homesickness and Summer's Eve . Grieg wrote piano music throughout his life, from an Arietta of the 1860s to a 1901 leaf of 'Remembrances' that has no end, leaving us dangling in the air. Hough s set is a worthy successor to Gilels, and that s saying a lot. My sole reservation is the piano sound, which is a trifle clipped and takes some getting used to. A Yamaha CFX, the booklet says. On second hearing, it sounds a little softer. **** --Sinfini music, 20/4/15 Altogether Edvard Grieg composed 66 Lyric Pieces, publishing them in 10 collections throughout his composing life, between 1867 and 1901. A mix of genre works, evocations and folksy nostalgia, they include some of the most charming and effective miniatures of 19th-century piano literature. While relatively few pianists record the whole collection, many, including Stephen Hough, have made their own selections. Hough selects 27 for this recording, playing them not in the order they were composed but ending, as so many sequences do, with the last piece of all, Remembrances (Op 71, No 7). Hough has also included several of the best known, such as Butterfly (Op 43, No 1), March of the Trolls (Op 54, No 3), and To Spring (Op 43, No 6). His performances are wonderfully direct, without a trace of indulgence. All of the pieces are small-scale the longest is Wedding Day at Troldhaugen (Op 65, No 6), which takes just under six minutes but, as his playing suggests, that doesn't mean the music needs to seem precious or fragile. The bright, sometimes spiky piano tone (a Yamaha, apparently) and the forthright way he tackles the faster numbers give a real robustness to some passages. The contrast with his quiet playing, every note perfectly placed and coloured, is superbly effective. The benchmark for new versions of the Lyric Pieces remains the selection of 20 pieces Emil Gilels recorded for Deutsche Grammophon in 1974. It s a measure of how impressive much of Hough s disc is that it invites comparisons with that all-time classic, though they aren't direct ones. Both pianists begin at the beginning with Arietta, the first of the Op 12 set, and end with Remembrances, but in between Gilels's sequence is strictly chronological, and he appears to have gone out of his way to avoid the best-known pieces such as March of the Trolls and Wedding Day. Surprisingly, Gilels's approach is also often much softer-edged, the contrasts less marked, the rhythms less pointed, so that what one sometimes most admires is the jewelled beauty of his playing. With Hough, the music always comes first. **** --guardian, 1/5/15 Stephen Hough is up there with the best; may we never take his excellence for granted. Gramophone,June'15 /// His playing of the Lyric pieces has an aristocratic refinement, with his control of the minute ebb and flow of his sound being a pleasure in itself. Performance ***** Recording ***** BBC Music Magazine, July'15 /// Grieg's complete Lyric Pieceswould fill three discs, but Stephen Hough's recording is all that most of us will ever need; Hough's selection of 27 contains many of the best-known and a fair few ripe rediscoveries. Twenty-eight short pieces pass in the blink of an eye; each one with a distinct flavour, each one approached with utter sincerity and deep affection. Hough is one of the smartest, most intelligent of pianists, but his erudition serves the Grieg, not his ego. He opens his collection with the same Arietta with which Emil Gilels began his famous DG d