Search - Grieg, Salonen, Oslo Philharmonic :: Peer Gynt Suite

Certainly NOT Incidental!

Timothy Fenderson | Thousand Oaks, CA USA | 07/08/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This 'incidental music' is by no means incidental. The more than 20 pieces in this collection are equally dramatic and at the same time diverse. In the symphony hall we are used to hearing just a few of these pieces in the two usual suites (#1 and #2). After hearing this recording you will realize you have been robbed all these years. Salonen brings a warmth to this legend so that these characters are somehow personable and human. (His scholarship in Scandinavian mthys and legends has paid off!) But the music exhibits such force that you cannot help but be moved. If you have not heard "In the Hall of the Mountain King" with full choir (as is performed here) then you have never fully experienced this famous piece. Also the plaintive folk violin and the angelically human solos will make you wonder why you have never heard them in this form. This is the only version of Peer Gynt worth buying, even though some of the other recordings are quite good, too. They are simply incomplete in every way. And besides, this Scandinavian collection of musicians can pull this off as no others can."

Possibly the best Peer Gynt single-CD-album ...

Pater Ecstaticus | Norway | 02/16/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"... beside the new recording of the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Paavo Jarvi. Although I must here confess I have never listened to (and can't compare them with) any of the five other more or less complete recordings of this work, namely those by Neeme Jarvi [27 cues; DGG], Marriner [only 12 cues; EMI], Tate [17 cues; EMI], Blomstedt [19 cues; Decca], Dreier [the first truly complete recording of all of the original music (1978); 32 cues (including three 'Norwegian Dances' not originally written for Peer Gynt); Unicorn UKCD; NKFCD] and Ruud [the first complete recording with 29 cues plus all of the dialogue, making a total of 51 cues, coming up on 113 minutes; BIS]. This review is necessarily incomplete as a result, and for this I apologize.

Anyhow, I HAVE also listened to the delightful album by Maestro Paavo Jarvi, and it has at least one advantage over this recording in that it offers even more of the music and singing in its original stage-play form. The only big difference between these albums with respect to 'originality' - apart from the absence of some musical pieces on the Salonen recording - lies in 'Solveig's Lullaby', which on the Jarvi album is interlaced with parts of the 'Whitsun Hymn' that preceded it (as it is in the original stage play-music?).

This recording by the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen is IMHO a great testimonial to Edvard Hagerup Grieg's (1843-1907) art. And not in the latest place to the truthful and what I would like to call 'Nordic' vision of the conductor.

The music making is highly concentrated and disciplined (somewhat 'leaner' or more 'athletic' than for Paavo Jarvi), but at the same time completely and utterly involved, especially with the Norwegian feel and atmosphere of the music, I believe - these ARE Norwegians, playing quintessentially Norwegian music (Peer Gynt IS their national epic) that (should) speak to them in a most direct way! The 'Halling' and 'Springar' have I think never sounded so completely like the original Norwegian folk melodies which they are, which comes of course as no surprise with these musicians.

Maestro Esa-Pekka Salonen has a wonderful feel for the fresh and lilting character of much of the music but on the other hand he is also very much in touch with the melancholic side of Grieg's music, which is, I think, quintessential Norwegian, a country that invariably must evoke a sense of melancholy with its long, snow laden winters, its short bursts of summer in which to rejoice in the fruits of the land, grown with much toil, and its clear brooks, lakes and rivers, its Trout and Salmon, Moose and Reindeer, Eagle and White-throated Dipper, Lynx and Wolverine, its vast coniferous forests, deep fjords, rolling, barren fjells ... and scattered widely throughout the splendour of relentless nature ... ancient churches, farms and villages. Norway is a most beautiful country, and the Norwegians themselves certainly know it! Much of the music of Grieg (1843-1907) is partly born of this sense of pride of the land and the striving for complete national independence (gained in 1905, so Grieg himself could be a happy witness to the fact).

On this recording there is no overdoing it (also a result of the 'athletic' playing style), the conductor seemingly taking the music on face value, letting it speak in all its pure and simple beauty. There is a nicely introvert quality to the playing which quite befits the music. But on the other hand, the conductor just as well lets the music dance and swagger energetically when needed, for example in the wedding scenes and in the scenes with the Trolls. Here, the energy is flowing freely. The naturalness of playing by the members of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra - who certainly possess the necessary Norwegian spirit to fully make this music come to life in a way that the composer may have meant and loved (?) - combined with finely nuanced directing with a keen eye for melodic flow make this album - at least in my view - a top recommendation. And last but not least, the combination of this orchestra and this conductor together with the warmly sympathetic and radiant voice of Barbara Hendricks is the purest and most moving imaginable, sounding especially involved and convincing in the closing 'Solveigs vuggevise'.

This music here sounds so completely honest and so absolutely evocative that no one who loves good pure and simple serious (or classical) music could (or should) IMHO do without it. If really pressed for, one could even be tempted to call this a truly great recording - and an ideal step onwards from the all-too-brief Suites and on towards the complete recordings by Dreier and Ruud."