Edvard Grieg
Violin Sonata c minor op. 45
Grieg’s Third Violin Sonata is one of his major creations and stands alongside the sonatas of Johannes Brahms and César Franck at the pinnacle of late nineteenth century chamber music. One small measure of the work’s renown is its occurrence in Thomas Mann’s novel "Doktor Faustus". The sonata has been growing more popular ever since its first publication, and it is now high time for it to appear in an urtext edition from Henle. A preface and detailed editorial notes provide interesting background material on the work’s source tradition.
About the Composer
Edvard Grieg
Most important Norwegian composer of the nineteenth century and promoter of Norwegian folk music. His lyrical character pieces in particular are well known.
| 1843 | Born in Bergen on June 15, the son of a merchant and British consul; early piano lessons with his mother, who was a pianist. |
| 1858–62 | Studies at the Leipzig Conservatory. |
| 1862 | Concerts in Norway. |
| 1863 | Copenhagen, with the support of Niels W. Gade. |
| from 1864 | Interest in Norwegian folk music, which finds its way into his compositions. |
| 1866 | Breakthrough with a concert of Norwegian music. Conductor of the Philharmonic Society. |
| 1867 | The first of a total of ten volumes of Lyric Pieces for piano, Op. 12, with relatively simple piano settings. |
| 1868/69 | Composition of the Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16, which is based on Schumann’s piano concerto. |
| 1869 | “25 Norwegian Folk Melodies and Dances,” Op. 17, for piano. |
| 1873 | Begins work on the opera “Olav Trygvason,” Op. 50, after Bjørnson, which is never completed. |
| 1874 | Composition stipend from the state. |
| 1874/75 | Composition of incidental music to Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt,” Op. 23, the basis for the Peer Gynt Suites. |
| 1876 | Attends the premiere of Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen” in Bayreuth. |
| 1880–82 | Conductor of the “Harmonien” musical society in Bergen. Thereafter he accepted no other positions. |
| 1883 | Visit to Bayreuth; he hears Wagner’s “Parsifal.” |
| 1884 | Composition of “From Holberg’s Time,” Op. 40, his most popular work. |
| from 1885 | He moves into his villa “Troldhaugen” (near Bergen). Composition and revision of older works in spring and summer, concert tours in fall and winter. |
| 1891 | Composition of the “Lyric Suite,” Op. 54, orchestrated in 1905. |
| 1907 | Death in Bergen on September 4. |
About the Authors
Egon Voss (Editor)
Dr. Egon Voss, born in 1938 in Magdeburg, did a secondary school teaching degree in Detmold (Staatsexamen in 1961) and studied German, philosophy and pedagogy in Kiel and Münster (Staatsexamen 1964). He subsequently studied musicology in Cologne, Kiel and Saarbrücken and completed his doctorate in 1968.
In 1969 Voss became a scholar at the Richard Wagner Complete Edition in Munich, since 1981 he has been its Head. From 1989 to 1990 he was the dramaturg at the Théȃtre la Monnaie/de Munt Brüssel, and from 1996 to 2002 a lecturer at the post-graduate programme “Textkritik” at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. Voss is a member of the advisory board for the edition “Richard Wagner, Sämtliche Briefe” as well as the journals “wagnerspectrum” and “The Wagner Journal”. He has published several books and a great many essays on Wagner, Schumann, Bach and other composers and musicological topics.
Ernst Schliephake (Fingering and bowing for Violin)
Ernst Schliephake was born in 1962. At the age of seven he was already a state prize-winner in the category violin at the young people’s music competition “Jugend musiziert”; the following year he achieved the same result with the clarinet. He was taught by Klaus Speicher and Heinz Hepp (violin and clarinet) and studied the violin in 1979 with Prof. Lukas David in Detmold, working as his assistant between 1983 and 1985. Aside from playing the violin in Tibor Varga’s chamber orchestra, he also played many chamber concerts with him, predominantly as a clarinettist. A master-class with Ruggiero Ricci 1981, led to an intensive collaboration and friendship.
Since 1986 he has been a violinist with the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Bavarian State Opera, and since 1989 has been the associate concertmaster with the Munich Symphony Orchestra.
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