Customer Reviews

Grieg: Greatest Hits

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Record labels come out with "best of" selections, usually to make some money off of older or poorer recordings (both as recordings and performances)-- thinking that only relatively ignorant buyers will opt for such fare, and they won't know the difference between the indifferent and excellent. But, on occasion, gems can inveigle their way onto such recordings. Here is a case in point: this recording, which does indeed include the most popular of Grieg's works, the Peer Gynt Suites 1 and 2, and the Piano Concerto, is excellent through and through. Fine performances of the Peer Gynt Suites, beautifully played, are crowned with what is still (in my opinion) the finest recorded performance of the A Minor Piano Concerto: a practically unknown pianist, a provincial (or seemingly!) orchestra, and a recording that dates back forty years. But, Ah! What a performance! The pianist and orchestra being both Norwegian, this music is in their genes. The remastering of the recording is very good. But it is the combined interpretation of the pianist and orchestra that shines so brightly. Most acclaimed modern interpretations tend to overdo the delicacy and "poetry" of the work to the extent of emasculating it. But this performance oozes vitality and virility, is BOTH exciting AND exquisitely beautiful. No one could ask for more poetic rendering of the slow movement, or the spacious middle portion of the finale; yet the tension and brilliance of the first movement and the main sections of the finale are brought out more brilliantly here than in almost all other, more expensive, later recordings. And all this for a pittance! The lowest price-range! Who could ask for anything more? Bliss on a budget! If you love Grieg, give this CD a spin. It will illuminate the concerto as few other recordings do.

Over twenty years ago, before returning to the US from two years in Norway, I bought the LP recording of this performance of the Grieg Piano Concerto. It immediately became a favorite, a summation for me of the beauty and wonder of the land and people. Since then, I have wondered if there were better recordings available. After all, this was a recording with no well known names and little hype. I can say,now,after twenty years of listening and looking, it is still the best.

Wrong. Despite RCA's every attempt to make this look like downmarket dreck for people who don't know any different, this disc actually enshrines some of the best performances of popular Grieg pieces you could ever find for next to nothing. Originally a compilation on the more tasteful RCA Classical Navigator label (which is what I have) it is extraordinarily felicitous in its selection of recordings: still one of the best two or three accounts of the Piano Concerto on the market, despite being over fifty years old and played by an "unknown" pianist accompanied by an equally obscure conductor directing a "provincial" orchestral (sorry, Oslo). Poetic, driven and inspired by turns, this is as close to perfect as you could wish. Ormandy turns in a beautiful performance of the two Peer Gynt suites, really capitalising on the silky sheen and virtuosity of the Philadelphia Orchestra in the early 1970's (good enough for James Levine to use for his superb Schumann and Mahler symphonies series) and Judith Blegen sings Solvejg's Song enchantingly in what sounds like authentic Norwegian. You can't go wrong.

I bought this cd about 15 years ago. The label is RCA Classics: Classical Navigator. I paid under four dollars for it, new.

What more can I say about the piano concerto that A Customer hasn`t yet already so aptly mentioned. Baekkelund and Gruner-Hegge simply let the concerto`s poetry flow by itself, without any obvious, pretentious mannerisms by the players and Baekkelund himself. The adagio is a careful study of hushed beauty and delicacy. I dare not even breathe when I listen to the whole movement. The final movement`s last dozen or so notes wrest your soul into the heavens, which no other recording of this concerto has ever done.

Of the very many piano concerto performances I own, this one is unequivocably the BEST ONE. Enough said.

Sometimes, simple is best. Baekkelund`s performance here is the perfect example of this.
The HIGHEST recommendation.

I was in the market for Grieg's Piano Concerto in A Minor. This CD had that and many other Greig masterpieces. What more could you ask?