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Grieg Notturno 54-4 (Lyric Pieces)

The ClassicFm host happened to spill th beans on this gem ...
and since yesterday have been luxuriating in the playing ...

Anybody else want to chat?

Here’s the 1st page.

I've studied and performed this; it's a beautiful piece. What "beans" are there to spill?

Regards,

Thanks for that BruceD ... so often the chappie hosting a radio program forgets to mention the opus number of the work ... in this case I was lucky enough to pick up on Grieg 54-4 ... IMSLP did the rest to provide the score.

Regards,

i recently recorded it for mytube channel; my humble offering of this beautiful piece...

Congratulations Entheo on your playing of the Grieg Notturno 54-4 ... your grey hair belies the rot ... that you need to be young to do justice to the piano.

Let’s hope your rendition spills over into others attempting the work ... it takes an initial bit of understanding for the cross hands bit, with the LH picking up the chord foundation ... leaving the RH free to delight in the elegiac melody ... I was particularly impressed with your handling of the bird-like trill.

I’m only halfway through the piece (looking forward to tomorrow) ... but would be interested to know how long it took you to memorize and polish the piece.

thanks btb for your kind words. when i took up the piano as a hobby @ 11 years ago my teacher gave me this piece to work on in the first year i believe. i recently revisited it; i'd say it took me a couple weeks to get to the point you just saw/heard.

enjoy working on it; lots of little passages to wood-shed!

ps - the pedals hold many secrets to this piece IMHO

I've always had trouble maintaining the melody, set in 2, against the accompaniment, set in 3 -- and this occurs really as a main element throughout the piece. Basically my approach has been to voice the melody quite far above the accompaniment, because it otherwise sounds "clunky" to my ears. Not terribly tough technically, like a lot of the Lyric Pieces, but I find that aspect quite challenging in 54 - 4.

Incidentally, the Op 54, Op 62, and Op 71 sets are my personal favorites -- I like Grieg more and more as he got older -- sounding more and more "Norwegian", and less romantic.

Rot, indeed! Where did that myth come from?

How coincidental, my teacher and I decided that this piece would be a summer piano camp project for me! Entheo, what a fantastic recording you made! Thank you for sharing!

It's lovely btb, I stared at your score last night on the computer, humming to myself, but it was late... This morning I found that I have a this in my Grieg book so played through the first part - very enjoyable. It's delightful to play up to the piu mosso where the change in tonality was so sudden that I thought i might have misread a clef or similar.

On a side note, I can't believe how much my sight reading has improved in the past year. No way would I have enjoyed reading this a year ago, or been capable of adding anything besides pitch and rhythm. I'm rather pleased about this

Now to listen to Entheo's....

Good to have you aboard Canonie on the Grieg 54-4 ... encouraging isn’t it to discover our sight-reading improvement over the weeks of bashing away at the old piano ... your eye has already picked up a quickening in pace with the Piu mosso bit ... but strangely the highly repetitive and neatly connected note patterns make this section quite easy.

PS I’ve got my money on the Aussie cricket side to win the World Cup ODI ... they recently gave the poms a 6-1 hiding ... please don’t tell my loyal South African fanatics (also in search of the Cup) ... I might get summarily shot for laying a traitorous bet!!

But some of us bluff ourselves that we are well informed.