Edvard Grieg's Three Violin Concertos?

[jasthill]

An interesting future from the Naxos label:
Edvard Grieg - 3 Concerti pour violon et orchestre de chambre (d'après des sonates pour violon et piano)
Concertos n°1, n°2 & n°3 (orch. Henning Kraggerud & Bernt Simen Lund) / Henning Kraggerud, violon - Tromso Chamber Orchestra

Link:
http://classique.abeillemusique.com/CD/Classique/8573137/0747313313778/Naxos/Edvard-Grieg/3-Concerti-pour-violon-et-orchestre-de-chambre-d-apres-des-sonates-pour-violon-et-piano/cleart-69260.html

Tromsø Chamber Orchestra is part of the Arctic Philharmonic Orchestra - from what I can tell these pieces were on one of their programs last year.

[Alan Howe]

...as you can see, these are arrangements of his violin sonatas.

More information:

Grieg: Violin Concertos ?
Grieg never wrote a violin concerto! What to do for an ambitious artistic orchestra leader? Henning Kraggerud and the cellist/arranger Bernt Simen Lund have rearranged Griegs three violinsonatas to orchestra format! This brave initiative is exactly what Grieg himself practised rearranging own works for new instrument combinations or use. The world-premiere took place in Tromsø, Arctic capital of Norway at Tromsø Chamber Orchestra's "Griegfest" on 29th November 2012.
The result of this music-historic event was met with ovations from the audience, filling Tromsø Culture House near to the brim.

The newspaper «Tromsø» agree:
Grieg-Without doubt.
"Henning Kraggerud is a remarkable violinist with great integrety. And Tromsø Chamber Orchestra is high class. To those who did not to attend the concert: You may look forward to hear Grieg's three "Violinconcertos" on CD."
(To be recorded for NAXOS by Henning Kraggerud & Tromsø Chamber Orchestra in January 2013)

http://www.proarte.no/news/news.htm

[kolaboy]

Uh... I like Grieg, but... no.

[chill319]

It's worth considering that Beethoven, for one, was not adverse to turning his violin concerto into a piano concerto, yet he never considered (so far as we know -- and for good reason) turning, say,  the Kreuzer sonata into a concerto.  As one who has accompanied violinists in all three Grieg violin sonatas since the early 1970s, I vote for Beethoven's genre choices.

The 19th-century orchestra is, without doubt, one of western culture's greatest and most seductive creations, but so is the accompanied violin sonata. What makes Grieg's violin sonata 3 his greatest is the quality of his response to the subtext of great string sonatas that have gone before -- NOT prior concertos.

[petershott@btinternet.com]

That hits the nail absolutely square on the head. I suppose no great harm is done by the experiment of rewriting Grieg's sonatas as concertos. But then it really is rather dumb surely? What's the point? And as Chill says, the experiment shows no understanding of the musical context of string sonatas and the entirely different language and context of a concerto.

Yes, I'm sure the audience loved the thing and applauded wildly. But having forked out for tickets they would hardly say 'boo'. Dammit, hope Naxos doesn't actually market this thing as 'Grieg's Violin Concertos'. Ugh, horrid!

[Alan Howe]

We don't need these arrangements, but - remembering the rather good Horovitz/Wallfisch arrangement of the Cello Sonata - I for one will be buying it in the hope that I'm wrong...

[eschiss1]

Most people who arrange sonatas into concertos forget that there are reasons other than mere Classical convention for that opening tutti (... see e.g. Thorpe-Davie, Girdlestone, Alfred Einstein, who provide some imhonesto non-dogmatic and thought-worthy explanations of the whole thing and why the classical-period/etc. concerto is not, as really has mistakenly been written, a "sonata for solo instrument and orchestra".)

[eschiss1]

They're marketing it as Three Concerti for Violin and Chamber Orchestra, at least on the cover (see here...)

[petershott@btinternet.com]

Huh, shame on them! For, as Naxos themselves say in the small print, Greig never wrote such things as Concerti for Violin and Chamber Orchestra.

I yearn for a world in which the term "sonata" was perceived by the marketing department as having equal weight and attractiveness to "concerto".

[FBerwald]

BIG DEAL!!!! Everyone knows Grieg did not write any Violin concerto so what's the big issue? Grieg recycled quite a bit of his own music if I'm not mistaken. As long as they don't mess it up like the Elgar Piano Concerto I welcome this.

[petershott@btinternet.com]

Well I'm sure not going to the barricades over the issue! But I do think there is an issue here, albeit not an earth shattering one.

Naxos operate in a mass market, and within that market it is quite false that "everyone knows Grieg did not write any violin concertos". I've got no quarrel with someone who wants to recast the Grieg sonatas as something else (though quite why they should want to do so is something that escapes me). My quarrel is with a record company or publisher who deceives a potential purchaser.

It is also an invidious practice for it implicitly suggests to the innocent that an arrangement of a sonata as a concerto somehow is an 'improvement' (besides revealing a lack of understanding of the conventions in which sonatas are composed and performed). So in the end it gets people to think that a sonata, written for but two instruments, is somehow inferior to a work written for soloist and orchestra. Thus in effect it surely discriminates against the former, reduces opportunity for listening to or appreciating Grieg's own compositions. In other words, another instance of dumbing down, playing to a market, not taking seriously what a composer intended. A bit like 'improving' the Mona Lisa by tarting up the image by daubing on the cosmetics to make her appear more like Madonna?

And the Elgar 'Piano Concerto' is a red herring here. That was someone's attempt to complete Elgar's own very fragmentary sketches.

[Alan Howe]

Naxos have already taken Grieg's violin sonatas seriously - by recording them in their original form, also with Kraggerud. So I see no reason at all why they shouldn't bring out these arrangements. The only question for me is: how good are they? We'll see..

[chill319]

Grieg was not averse to providing the occasional Mozart piano sonata with an accompaniment. This was arguably less intrusive than the case of Gounod, who perhaps motivated by the same Zeitgeist, was not averse to treating a finished piece by Bach as an accompaniment for his own 19th-century tune. Hommage takes many forms.

I suspect that the making of the three Grieg violin pseudo-concertos was not all that different in spirit from Grieg's second-piano afterthoughts. I suspect, however, that the pseudo-concertos will end up in a position of similar importance (or unimportance) within the Grieg canon.

[eschiss1]

Schumann provided accompaniments to the sonatas and partitas (then just called sonatas, I think) of Bach, and to his cello suites (sonatas, again, I think they were called then; of those accompaniments only that to no.3 survives...) among other works. It wasn't unusual, I think.

[Alan Howe]

Audio samples are available here:
http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/r/Naxos/8573137#listen