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Edvard GRIEG (1843-1907)
String Quartets arranged for String Orchestra
String Quartet in G minor, Op. 27 (1878) (arr. Alf Årdal) [35:03]
String Quartet No.2 in F major (1891) (arr. Alf Årdal) [19:29]
Arne NORDHEIM (1931-2010)
Rendezvous (1986) [21:55]
Oslo Camerata/Stephan Barratt-Due
rec. 17-21 August 2009, Lommedalen Church, Oslo, Norway. DDD
NAXOS 8.572441 [76:45]
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Edvard GRIEG (1843-1907)
Two Elegiac Melodies, Op.34 (1880) [8:47]
Two Melodies for String Orchestra, Op.53 (1890) [8:20]
From Holberg’s Time: Suite in the Olden Style (1884) [20:06]
Two Lyric Pieces, Op.68 (1897-99) [7:10]
Two Nordic Melodies for String Orchestra, Op. 63 (1895) [11:07]
Lyric Suite Op.54, (1905) [15:42]
Malmö
Symphony Orchestra/Bjarte Engeset
rec. 25-27 May 2009 (tracks 1-14); 24-25 August 2006 (tracks 15-18),
Concert Hall of the Malmö Symphony Orchestra, Sweden. DDD
NAXOS 8.572403 [72:13] |
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These are two Scandinavian issues from Naxos, both mostly recorded
in 2009 under Norwegian conductors and devoted to arrangements
of Grieg’s music for string orchestra. Many of his compositions
originally written for piano or chamber instruments ended up
arranged for the string section of a symphony orchestra. Some
were expressly written for that grouping. Grieg himself encouraged
what we might call the ‘Big Band Sound’ and often urged a “bigger
the better” approach, naming sixty strings as ideal. So there
shouldn’t be too much of a purist issue regarding whether music
such as the quartets or piano items “ought” to be arranged in
this manner.
The first disc uses arrangements made by Norwegian conductor
Alf Årdal. According to violinist and conductor Stephan Barratt-Due,
“The depth given by adding a double bass, and the variety in
using solos and tutti, gives in our opinion, the pieces a new
dimension combining both the intimacy of Grieg and lifting the
richness of the romantic expression in the pieces.” That gain
in rich sonority must be offset against the loss of contrast.
In comparison with the leaner sound of a string quartet, there
is a certain inevitable homogeneity produced by a larger, beautifully
co-ordinated string band. It tends to emphasise the more consolatory
ideas at the expense of the stark immediacy created by the harmonic
clashes of only four instruments. Romantic yearnings predominate
over raw, psychological anguish. Nonetheless, this is another,
valid way to experience music which comprehensively puts to
bed any lingering caricature of Grieg as a chocolate-box composer.
This is not perhaps amongst Grieg’s best or indeed most popular
music. One senses that he was not entirely comfortable in the
idiom, which might explain why he left incomplete the second
quartet, begun in 1891 and still unfinished at his death, and
why certain musical ideas occasionally seem to lack inspiration.
On the other hand, so much is skilled and delightful that the
music is self-recommending to anyone who wants to explore Grieg’s
output in different guises.
Tempi are very similar to previous string quartet versions,
so there is no unseemly lingering and no lack of tension. If
you want to hear the original string quartet version, I recommend
that by the Raphael Quartet, available either as a single Regis
disc or as part of a 3 CD Brilliant issue of Grieg’s complete
chamber music. They play the completed version of the second
F major quartet, whereas here we have only the first two movements,
giving room for another item.
In truth, although it was enterprising idea to include recently
deceased Norwegian composer Arne Nordheim’s Rendezvous
as a twenty-minute makeweight, I would sooner have had the third
and fourth movements of the F major quartet as completed by
Grieg’s friend, Julius Röntgen. Rendezvous is the result
of the composer following his predecessor’s precedent and in
1986 expanding his quartet so that it can be played by a string
orchestra. It is an intense, gloomy work exploiting the contrast
between grumbling lower and soaring upper strings. It is one
which I shall leave others to comment upon, as it is not in
an idiom to which I respond, being mostly to my ears reminiscent
of Shostakovich in hyper-depressive mode.
The second disc, conducted by Bjarte Engeset, who contributes
a long and very informative essay in the CD notes, is Volume
6 in the acclaimed Naxos “Grieg Edition”: a compilation of Grieg’s
finest music for strings, reflecting his love of mountains,
folk music, folk tales and all things Norwegian. Although Grieg’s
voice is always his own, international influences resulting
from his travels to Leipzig, Copenhagen and Rome and his exposure
to Wagner’s orchestration are clearly apparent. Debussy’s oft-quoted
aphorism that when listening to the Lyric Pieces “one
has in one's mouth that bizarre yet delightful taste
of pink bon-bons filled with snow” applies far more to this
collection in general than to the arrangements of the string
quartets. It is often assumed that Debussy’s observation carried
more than a hint of a sneer about it yet a more generous interpretation
could embrace the idea that it conveys the cool, bracing streak
in Grieg’s music which offsets sentimentality. Certainly there
is often a darkness or a melancholy about it which pulls at
the heart-strings. The two concluding movements of the Holberg
Suite are typical of the profound, elegiac quality Grieg
can evoke through the simplest of means such as the dialogue
between the upper and lower strings in the Air or the
duet between solo violin and solo viola in the Rigaudon,
both exploiting the pathos of G minor. The words “lyric” and
“elegy” are by no means antithetical in Grieg. The profound
loneliness of a distant, keening oboe which begins Evening
in the Mountains has something of the quality of the shepherd’s
cor anglais in the opening of Tristan und Isolde. Grieg
wrote in a letter to his biographer that the “essential feature
of Norwegian folksongs … is a deep melancholy … mysterious darkness
and unbridled wildness”, qualities typified in the impassioned
performance here of In Folk Style, the first of the
Two Nordic Melodies. Yet when Grieg is in pure pastoral
mode, such as in the simple, beguiling melody of Cow-Call,
nothing could be more charming and insouciant.
The standard of playing on both discs is very high throughout.
I prefer a little more pace and attack in the Prelude
of the Holberg Suite but by and large everything –
instrumental balance, phrasing, tempi and colouration – is judged
to a nicety.
The sound quality of both recordings is exemplary; these days,
especially where Naxos is concerned, it is rare for it to be
otherwise. Even though they contain mainly miniatures and music
specifically orchestrated to fall pleasantly in the ear, these
two releases amply illustrate the combination of rare and contradictory
qualities which make Grieg Norway’s greatest composer.
Ralph Moore
see review by Paul
Corfield Godfrey (Naxos 8.572441)
see reviews by Brian
Reinhart and Stephen Vasta
(Naxos 8.572403)
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