Edvard Grieg: Orchestral Songs – Per Vollestad

Per Vollestad interprets Grieg songs in orchestral versions

Edvard Grieg always chose words to his vocal music which related to something he had experienced himself. On this album, one of Norway´s premier singers, Per Vollestad, with the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra and conductor Terje Mikkelsen, performs a collection of several of Grieg´s most deep-felt vocal works. Together they bring us into personal world of Grieg.

The romance “A Swan” was orchestrated in 1895 after originally being written for voice and pianoforte in 1876, a work full of passionate undertones. Written around the same time, the piece “I wandered one lovely summer´s eve” gives the expression to something that is almost entirely opposite: joy of life and delight in Nature. Particularly personal is “The Bewitched” where Vollestad conveys the composer´s spiritual upheavals at the time of writing. Furthermore, the baritone performs one of Grieg´s most treasured orchestral songs, “From Monte Pincio”, the strongly national-romantic “Henrik Wergeland”, and not least “Twelve Songs from Poems of Aa. O. Vinje”, a major work in the sphere of Norwegian and Nordic lyrical song composition.