Edvard Grieg

Edvard Grieg, born in Bergen in 1843, is Norway’s best-loved composer and one of the defining voices of musical nationalism in the nineteenth century. Encouraged by the violinist Ole Bull, he trained at the Leipzig Conservatory, but it was his later immersion in Norwegian folk music, with its modal inflections, drones and dance rhythms, that gave his music its unmistakable accent. His Piano Concerto in A minor, written when he was only twenty-four, made his name across Europe, and his incidental music to Ibsen’s Peer Gynt became some of the most famous music ever written for the theatre. A master of the miniature, he poured much of his finest invention into songs and into the ten books of Lyric Pieces for piano. In later life he lived at Troldhaugen, his villa outside Bergen, touring widely as pianist and conductor; he died in Bergen in 1907, a national hero.