Grieg: Symphonic Dances

Album review

Conductor Edward Gardner ascended the podium of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra in 2015, and by the time this album appeared in 2024 and climbed onto classical best-seller charts, audiences must have begun to think of him almost as an honorary Norwegian. Consider the program here, which mixes the familiar Symphonic Dances, Op. 64, of Grieg with some quite uncommon works. The latter may be the major attractions; both the melodrama Bergliot, Op. 42, and the dramatic cantata Before a Southern Convent, Op. 20, had gone unrecorded since 2008 when this album appeared. Both works involve texts by playwright Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson. Bergliot is delightful, suggesting what Grieg might have done if he had lived long enough to write film music, and one can't help but think that a performance of the spoken part with an English translation would propel it into the regular concert repertory. The Symphonic Dances are perfectly idiomatic, with strong rhythmic propulsion but not even a hint of self-conscious folkish gestures, although the pieces are based on Norwegian folk melodies. The Bergen musicians, aided along the way by a speaker and female singers, are firmly under Gardner's control, and this album is a must for Grieg fans and, indeed, for lovers of nationalist music of any stripe.

© James Manheim /TiVo