Norwegian pianist
Håvard Gimse has established his credentials in this kind of
repertoire with several well-received discs of Sibelius
and Tveitt
for Naxos and Marco Polo. Here the focus is on folk-inspired
music, particularly by his fairly obscure compatriot from Telemark,
Klaus Egge. The short piece of solo Grieg which opens the disc
is a logical prelude because it is based on the same folk tune
which underpins the Piano Concerto. This was sourced from Telemark
and originally “collected” by Lindeman in 1858. The concerto
is in a single movement with seven variations followed by a
cadenza and a fugue to finish. It is rhapsodic in feeling within
an idiom which is broadly late-romantic. Gimse’s playing is
strikingly lucid and the light string accompaniment blends in
well under the direction of Håvard’s brother Øyvind Gimse who
leads the Trondheim Soloists from the ‘cello. This will certainly
be enjoyed by anyone who warms to the Tveitt
concertos.
Next comes the Halling
Fantasy, a folk-fiddle inspired work which could easily
be mistaken for Grieg. Egge’s First Piano Sonata pre-dates the
second concerto by a decade and was apparently his “breakthrough”
work. Conventionally structured in four movements it is also
based on traditional Norwegian melodies. There is a slow introduction
to the first movement which contains the three main tunes. The
extended second movement adagio is deeply-felt before the brief
but demoniac “scherzo inferno” leads directly into an often
contrapuntal finale.
The three brief
pieces which conclude the disc are all easy on the ear and,
in the case of the Tveitt, a world première recording. Apparently
he jotted down the work in about half an hour outside a church
before a wedding and gave it to the bride Ragnahild Nordsjø.
She was moved to dig it out quite recently when she came across
Gimse’s recording of Tveitt’s solo piano music.
The documentation
focuses mainly on the derivation of the music and is fine as
far as it goes. For a composer as obscure as Egge it would have
been useful to have a little more information about his life
and other music. I suppose it is easy enough to find such information
through Google – for example from the Music
Information Centre of Norway. This indicates some facts
I found a little surprising – Egge studied with Fartein Valen
and adopted twelve note techniques later on in life. Apparently
he wrote five symphonies and five concertos – three for piano
and one each for violin and cello.
With an interesting,
attractive and well-recorded programme, this is another highly
recommendable disc from Håvard Gimse.
Patrick C
Waller
Håvard Gimse
(piano) 
