Edvard Grieg: Fragments from Piano Concerto Nr. 2, EG 120 (1881)

00:00 - I. Quarter Note = 76
00:26 - II. Eighth Note = 200
00:52 - III. Dotted Quarter Note = 152
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Piano: Einar Steen-Nøkleberg
Year of Recording: 1994
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"The Concerto in B minor for piano and orchestra, EG 120, was found posthumously among Grieg's sketches housed now in the Grieg Collection in the Bergen Public Library. The sketches for the proposed B minor concerto were published in Volume 20 of the complete works. Same of these were published after the composers death by his friend Julius Röntgen (1885-1910) in Die Musik, 7. Jg., Volume 25 (1907-1908). According to him Grieg always took his sketches with him when he travelled, so that he could take them out and work on them, if the opportunity presented itself. Supposedly he started work on the piano concerto as the result of something that was intended as a joke. In 1881 he wrote to Dr Abraham at Peters':

I realise to my surprise that it is very good for me to compose when I am forced to do so. I believe that if someone paid me, let us say, .1,000 Dalers a. year in advance, that I would relax long before the required number of Compositions were finished.

Dr Abraham took him at his word and replied: I am very please that you have such a burning desire to compose more than you have the last few years. Therefore, I have the pleasure of sending you 3000 Marks, as you suggested, and ask that you send me a piano concerto, some piano pieces and a concert-overture for orchestra before September next year.'

Unfortunately Grieg did not keep his part of the agreement. Instead he turned over a number of other compositions to the publishing-house. In May 1883 he w rote that he had actually begun a piano concerto but that his Muse would not budge. After this there were no further hints of any plans for the concerto, from which fragments of the piano part are here recorded for the first time." (NAXOS)
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