Edvard Grieg

At 64 years old, Edvard Grieg has this physical status:

Edvard Hagerup Grieg (15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907) was a Norwegian composer and pianist.

He is widely respected as one of the top Romantic composers of the period, and his music is included in the standard classical repertoire around the world.

Grieg's use and construction of Norwegian folk music in his own compositions brought Norwegian folk music to international prominence, as well as aiding in the establishment of a national identity, as Jean Sibelius and Bedrich Smetana did in Finland and Bohemia, respectively.

The Edvard Grieg Museum in Grieg's former home, Troldhaugen, is dedicated to his memory.

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Career

Grieg made his debut as a concert pianist in Karlshamn, Sweden, in 1861. He completed his studies in Leipzig and performed his first concert in his hometown town, where Beethoven's Pathétique sonata was included in his program.

Grieg went to Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1863, and stayed there for three years. J. P. E. Hartmann and Niels Gade, two Danish composers, visited him. Rikard Nordraak, the Norwegian national anthem's composer, was also a valuable mentor and source of inspiration. Nordraak died in 1866, and Grieg organized a funeral march in his honor.

Grieg married Nina Hagerup (1845-1935), a lyric soprano, on June 11, 1867. Alexandra, their only child, was born in the next year. Alexandra died of meningitis in 1869. Grieg wrote his Piano Concerto in A minor while on holiday in Denmark in 1868. On April 3rd 1869 in Copenhagen's Casino Theatre, Edmund Neupert gave the concerto its first appearance. Grieg himself was unable to attend responsibilities in Christiania (now Oslo).

Franz Liszt, who had not yet met Grieg, wrote a letter describing him to the Norwegian Ministry of Education, which culminated in Grieg's gain of a travel grant. In 1870, the two men first met in Rome. They examined Violin Sonata No. 63 on Grieg's first visit. Liszt was a huge fan of the 1, which delighted him greatly. Grieg's second visit to Liszt in April was taken with him the piano Concerto manuscript, which Liszt proceeded to read (including the orchestral arrangement). Liszt's performance wowed his audience, but Grieg told him that he played the first movement too quickly. Grieg also gave Grieg some suggestions on orchestration (for example, to give the second theme of the first movement to a solo trumpet, which Grieg refused to accept).

He became acquainted with poet Bjerne Bjerne Bjrnson, who expressed his interest in Norwegian self-government in the 1870s. Landkjenning and Sigurd Jorsalfar were among Grieg's poems set to music. They settled on an opera based on King Olav Trygvason, but Grieg was diverted to work on incidental music for Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt, which naturally offended Bjrnson. They were reunited eventually.

Peer Gynt's incidental music, arranged at the request of the author, contributed to the success of the project, and it has later developed into some of the composer's most popular suites.

Grieg had close ties with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra (Harmonien), and later became the orchestra's Music Director from 1880 to 1882. Grieg was visiting Tchaikovsky in Leipzig in 1888. Tchaikovsky's charm impressed Grieg. Tchaikovsky praised Grieg's music, praises its longevity, originality, and warmth.

Grieg and his wife performed some of his songs at a private concert at Windsor Castle for Queen Victoria and her court on December 6, 1897.

Grieg was granted two honorary doctorates by the University of Cambridge in 1894 and the University of Oxford in 1906.

Grieg received a pension when he reached retirement age. Grieg made nine 78-rpm gramophone recordings of his piano music in Paris during 1903. Despite poor fidelity, both LPs and CDs have been reissued. Grieg also performed piano music rolls for the Hupfeld Phonola piano-player system and a Welte-Mignon reproducing device, both of which are still available and can be heard today. He also worked with the Aeolian Company's 'Autograph Metrostyle' piano roll series, wherein he introduced the tempo mapping for many of his pieces.

Grieg, an antisemitic scandal that was then roiling French politics, has cancelled his concerts in France in 1899. Grieg had hoped that the French would return to the spirit of 1789, when the French republic declared that it would protect basic human rights." He became the object of a lot of French hate mail of the day as a result of his comments regarding the affair.

He first met composer and pianist Percy Grainger in London in 1906. Grainger was a huge fan of Grieg's music and had a strong sense of empathy right away. "I have written Norwegian Peasant Dances that no one in my country can attend," Grieg said in a 1907 interview, and here comes this Australian who plays them as they should be played." "We Scandinavians can do more than love," he says.

Edvard Grieg died at the Municipal Hospital in Bergen, Norway, on September 4th, 1907, at the age of 64, from heart disease. He had been suffering from a long period of illness. "Well, if it must be so," he said.

Between 30,000 and 40,000 people attended his funeral service, which was attended by 30,000 to 40,000 people. Obeying his wish, his own Funeral March in Honor of Rikard Nordraak was held by his friend Johan Halvorsen, who had married Grieg's niece. In addition, Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 6 is among the Funeral March protests. Two games were played. Grieg was cremated in Bergen's first Norwegian crematorium, just this year, and his remains were entombed in a mountain crypt near his house, Troldhaugen. Her ashes were scattered alongside his wife's husband's after the husband's death.

After his marriage, Edvard Grieg and his wife were Unitarians, and Nina attended the Unitarian church in Copenhagen.

Grieg's legacy goes far beyond the field of music a century after his death. After Grieg, there is a large sculpture of Grieg in Seattle, while Quality Hotel Edvard Grieg, one of Bergen's best hotels, is named after Grieg.

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