edvard grieg sonata for piano e minor op 7 (1865, rev 1887)
DESCRIPTION
Early on in his career, before discovering his talents for miniatures, songs, and incidental music, Edvard Grieg tried his hand at more traditional concert music in its then-rigidly codified styles and forms. Indeed, the list of Grieg's almost entirely unplayed early compositions reads like a text of essential concert music varieties: a symphony, some chamber sonatas, an abandoned string quartet, a piano concerto. The first of all these standard concert works to be completed was the Sonata for piano in E minor, Op. 7 (1865, revised 1887), a work so obscure that one can dig through book after book without catching a single reference to it and plunder shelf after shelf without finding either a copy or a recording. And yet, for all that obscurity—and despite Grieg's admitted discomfort with such works—the Piano Sonata in E minor is, in its own way, quite an appealing work, like a colorful and clever, but admittedly underdeveloped child. The first of its four movements, Allegro moderato, rides forth on a vital theme that seems to want to plumb the very depths of the earth; if the figurations that surround it and the manner in which it is built up over the course of the movement seem somewhat juvenile, the same might be said of many a more-famous sonata composer's earliest efforts. The Andante molto second movement has just a touch of the same time-stands-still magic that graces the slow movement of the composer's Piano Concerto (written some three years later). The third movement—Alla minuetto, ma poco più lento—may be uncomfortably heavy-handed, but its peculiar Nordic flavor and odd dissonances at least add novelty. The finale gallops forth in 6/8 meter and has a chorale-like second subject which, during the recapitulation, achieves the happy E major in which the sonata closes.TRANSCRIPT
