Grieg - In the Hall of the Mountain King (from Peer Gynt Suite #1) - Eva Knardahl Piano

Edvard Grieg (1843–1907) composed this music in 1875 for the Peer Gynt play by Henrik Ibsen. He later extracted some of the movements into suites. This is from Peer Gynt Suite Op.46. From the original orchestral compositions Grieg also transcribed versions for solo piano and piano 4 hands. Eva Knardahl Freiwald (10 May 1927 – 3 September 2006) was a Norwegian pianist who recorded the complete works of Edvard Grieg. She worked with the Minnesota Orchestra for 15 years before working for the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra. In 1967 she returned to Norway and was named the first professor of chamber music at the Norwegian Academy of Music. Wikipedia has the following information about this piece: "The piece is played as the title character Peer Gynt, in a dream-like fantasy, enters "Dovregubbens (the troll Mountain King&hall". The scene&introduction continues: "There is a great crowd of troll courtiers, gnomes and goblins. Dovregubben sits on his throne, with crown and sceptre, surrounded by his children and relatives. Peer Gynt stands before him. There is a tremendous uproar in the hall." The lines sung are the first lines in the scene. Grieg himself wrote, "For the Hall of the Mountain King I have written something that so reeks of cowpats, ultra-Norwegianism, and &that I can&bear to hear it, though I hope that the irony will make itself felt." The theme of "to thyself be... enough" – avoiding the commitment implicit in the phrase "To thine own self be true" and just...