Posted on by tjphilbrick

Top 25 #11 – Peer Gynt Suite

Hello all,

I hope you all enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday with friends and family!

This week, we will hear a piece that those of you who have been here for awhile have definitely heard before – Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite. It is performed in the video above by the Limburgs Symphony (Amsterdam) under the direction of Maestro Otto Tausk.

The Peer Gynt Suite is a musical rendition of Henrik Ibsen’s 1867 drama “Peer Gynt,” which depicted the story of a Norwegian peasant-hero. Initially, Ibsen did not intend for the play to be performed with musical accompaniment. However, halfway through the composition process, he changed his mind and reached out to his good friend Edvard Grieg. Despite having no experience writing music for plays, Grieg agreed to create a score for the production of “Peer Gynt.” Ibsen’s play has largely been forgotten, but Grieg’s musical representation of it has become a central component of the musical universe.

There are four movements in the Peer Gynt Suite. First, you’ll hear “Morning,” which opens the drama with the awakening of the hero character. Second, you’ll hear “The Death of Ase,” which creates the primary tension in the drama. Third, you’ll hear “Anitra’s Dance.” Fourth and finally, you’ll hear what may be the most famous of all Grieg’s compositions: “In the Hall of the Mountain King.” This is one of the most well-known and widely-loved orchestral compositions of all time, and I trust that, after hearing it, you’ll see why.

Enjoy!

T

Posted on by tjphilbrick

Sketches

Hello all,

Our music for this week is the Suite No. 1 from Mikail Ippolitov-Ivanov’s Caucasion Sketches. I’m willing to bet that none of you – even the most veteran musicians – have heard of this piece. However, one of the many goals of This Week’s Music is to popularize music that no one knows about!

Ippolitov-Ivanov was a Russian composer in the early 20th century who studied with the famous Rimsky-Korsakov. One of his first jobs was as a conductor in the region of Russia that is now Georgia. During his eleven years there, he fell in love with the soaring mountain peaks and rich folk heritage of the region. The Caucasion Sketches are his musical depiction of the rural Caucasus Mountains of Georgia, which, as a result of their position along a major trade route from the Black Sea to Moscow, were filled with an incredible amount of cultural diversity.

There are four movements in the Caucasion Sketches:

  • In a Mountain Pass
  • In a Village – listen for the English horn’s solo in this movement. It is supposedly a representation of an instrument native to the Caucasus Mountains region called the zurna.
  • In a Mosque
  • Procession of the Sardar – the Sardar was the leader or regional commander, and this movement depicts the pomp and circumstance that surround his arrival in the village.

Enjoy!

T