Norwegian composer and pianist Edvard Grieg enjoyed celebrity status akin to a modern-day rock star on his visits to Britain during his heyday from 1860 until the turn of the century. Lionel Carley examines these influential visits to a country that embraced Grieg’s music in a new book, Edvard Grieg in England.
"It had become clear to me that this particularly important aspect of Grieg’s life had hardly been considered by previous biographers and critics," said Carley, who examines Grieg’s time spent in Britain between 1862 and 1906.
Carley’s book describes how England experienced 'Grieg Fever?' including "packed-out concert halls, extraordinary press coverage, and adulation on the part of Grieg’s audiences.
"The appreciation lasted until Grieg’s death and beyond, in other words, from the later 1870s, when his music came to be widely performed in England (and indeed when his works for solo piano featured ever more strongly in the teaching of piano) until 1907.
"When he played the solo part of his hugely popular Piano Concerto in 1888 it was reported that his audience included ‘perhaps the largest assemblage of professional pianists in Britain.’"
Grieg took away from his English experiences a "dawning realization that he himself (and very soon his wife) had become popular heroes in much the same way that ‘pop stars’ are hero-worshipped today; as well as new friends, disciples and pounds sterling."
Does Grieg's work stand up to scrutiny today? "His music, with its freshness, tunefulness and harmonic invention, remains as popular as ever," says Carley.
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