Grieg Concerto

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli's first performance of this famous concerto seems to have been during his Turin début on 2 February 1940.  

On 3 February, La Stampa published an article by Andrea Della Corte: "Grieg's Concerto took a back seat, with all the attention and praise focused on the performer. He played enchantingly. This word says it all. It's no use seeking the substance and limits of enchantments."

Two years later, the pianist recorded it in the studio with Alceo Galliera, in Milan on 7 February 1942. Christian Johansson has a recording date of September 1942.

Christian Johansson mentions an off-air recording on 7 June, 1941: Geneva, Switzerland.  Grieg: Piano Concerto in A minor, Op.16 [excerpt]

Ernest Ansermet / Orchestre de la Suisse Romande

(Benedetti Michelangeli is certainly gentler in the exquisite tracery of the piano's entry in the slow movement. I am always surprised to hear how bold he became in this passage e.g. in his Royal Festival Hall performance on 17 June, 1965, accompanied by the New Philharmonia Orchestra and conducted by Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos.)

The Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16, composed by Edvard Grieg in 1868, when he was only 24 years old.  At the time of composition, he was in Søllerød, Denmark, during one of his visits there to benefit from the climate.

Grieg's concerto provides evidence of his interest in Norwegian folk music; the opening flourish is based on the motif of a falling minor second followed by a falling major third, which is typical of the folk music of Grieg's native country. This specific motif occurs in other works by Grieg, including the String Quartet No. 1. In the last movement of the concerto, similarities to the halling (a Norwegian folk dance) and imitations of the Hardanger fiddle (the Norwegian folk fiddle) have been detected.

The work was premiered by Edmund Neupert on 3 April 1869, in Copenhagen, with Holger Simon Paulli conducting. The Norwegian premiere in Christiania followed on 7 August.

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'Young pianists were beginning to sideline it: one qualified better with Brahms'sSecond, or even Prokofiev's Third, than with Grieg (and Tchaikovsky and Liszt). If he had gone to study at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, with Casella, who was the greatest exponent of the Italian intelligentsia, Benedetti Michelangeli [Il giovane arcangelo, "the young archangel" as Rattalino sometimes calls him] would have heard Grieg's Concerto torn to shreds [avrebbe sentito far carne di porco del Concerto di Grieg].  Having studied in Milan, where the environment was much more traditionalist, he was able conscientiously to refine Grieg's Concerto as if it were Mozart, and to present it to the public, and in so doing generating boundless enthusiasm for the work.

'Benedetti Michelangeli's first and greatest merit is to reject the tradition..., to hear the problematic text in Grieg's Concerto, and to approach it from Ravel's perspective.'

[Piero Rattalino, p.24f.]