Geirr Tveitt: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 4 (Northern Lights); The Turtle

Thanks to the six discs of orchestral music already released on BIS, the name of Geirr Tveitt is becoming established as a significant contributor to twentieth century art music. Though Edvard Grieg died the year before Tveitt’s birth, the two Norwegian composers shared many similar musical experiences. Both undertook the major part of their musical training in Leipzig. Both were distinguished pianists. And both sought throughout their lives to find a musical voice in which to express what they felt about their country and its unique natural attributes. If the picture that Grieg paints of Norway is strongly influenced by the fact that he was a city dweller, Tveitt’s version is full of nature’s raw power. Grieg’s Norway is that of summer in the mountains with all the freshness of Eden newly discovered. Tveitt himself lived up in the mountains where winter weather rules for the greater part of the year. Indeed his own house disappeared under an avalanche. Nature for him is an immutable force. This becomes very evident in Piano Concerto No. 4, included on this disc. It bears the Norwegian title Nordljos – meaning the northern lights or aurora borealis. It is really only in very recent times that the physics involved in creating these extraordinary phenomena in the night sky have been understood. Tveitt himself was evidently fascinated and awed by the great, eerily coloured flames that leap across space and he has given expression to this in a colourful concerto. The present disc also offers Piano Concerto No. 1, which Tveitt completed while still a student in Leipzig and which was very well received when first performed there. The Turtle, a major composition for mezzo-soprano and orchestra completes the programme. The text (in English) comes from Nobel prize-winner John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and the demanding solo part was originally written with the great Norwegian singer Kirsten Flagstad in mind. As through the entire series of discs, it is Stavanger SO and Ole Kristian Ruud who brings us the music of their countryman – aided by fellow Norwegians Håkon Austbø (in Concerto No. 4) and Ingebjørg Kosmo (in The Turtle) – both BIS first-timers – and Sveinung Bjelland (Concerto No. 1), who also participated on the previous Tveitt release (BIS-CD- 1252). In sum: a listener-friendly musical adventure.'