Grieg’s Miniature Worlds, Beautifully Inhabited
The Lyric Pieces constitute one of the great ongoing projects in piano literature—ten books spanning more than three decades of Grieg’s creative life, from 1867 to 1901. They’re not merely salon trifles, though the drawing room certainly claimed them. These miniatures contain multitudes.
Håkon Austbø’s selection for Regis—twenty-six pieces drawn from across the cycle—makes a persuasive case for Grieg’s evolving harmonic language and his uncanny ability to distill atmosphere into two or three minutes of music. What strikes me listening through this disc is how the pianist refuses to condescend to the material. There’s no whiff of the precious or apologetic here. Austbø, who grew up in France but clearly carries Norwegian sensibility in his bones, plays this music as though it matters—because it does.
Take the opening “Arietta” from Op. 12. Four pages, barely more. Yet Austbø finds in those simple phrases a depth of feeling that never tips into sentimentality. His touch is clean, his pedaling judicious. The melodic line sings without artifice. This is harder than it sounds—Grieg’s directness can expose a pianist’s every miscalculation.
The more robust pieces reveal Austbø’s technical command. “March of the Dwarfs” (Op. 54, No. 3) has the requisite rhythmic bite, those unsettling chromatic lurches properly unhinged. He doesn’t overdo the grotesquerie—the piece is strange enough on its own terms. And in “Puck” from the late Op. 71, there’s a quicksilver quality to his fingerwork that captures the sprite’s mercurial nature without resorting to mere velocity as an end in itself.
But it’s in the quieter corners that Austbø most persuades. “Melodie” (Op. 47, No. 3) unfolds with an aching restraint, its melancholy never overwrought. The harmonic shifts—those characteristic Griegian inflections that influenced Debussy more than we usually acknowledge—register with subtle emphasis. Austbø understands that these pieces breathe; he gives them space.
“Notturno” from Op. 54 finds him shaping the long-breathed phrases with uncommon sensitivity to Grieg’s inner voices. There’s a richness of texture here that belies the music’s apparent simplicity. And “Wedding Day at Troldhaugen“—that beloved warhorse—emerges fresh and unforced, its celebratory bells ringing clear without bombast.
The sound Regis has captured is warm and immediate, placing the listener close to the instrument without undue intimacy. Austbø’s Steinway (I assume) has a pleasing bloom in the middle register where so much of this music lives.
One could quibble with programming choices—why this “Melodie” and not that “Nocturne”?—but Austbø’s selection traces a coherent path through Grieg’s development. The late pieces from Op. 71 show a composer still exploring, still finding new corners in his own idiom. “Remembrances” closes the disc with affecting simplicity.
Comparisons are inevitable. Gilels on DG remains a touchstone, his aristocratic bearing lending these pieces unexpected grandeur. Austbø offers something different—more intimate, perhaps, more attuned to the music’s Norwegian roots. His complete cycle on Brilliant Classics deserves wider hearing, but this Regis sampler makes an distinguished introduction to his approach.
This is playing of genuine distinction. Austbø has the craft, certainly, but more importantly he has the imagination to inhabit these miniature worlds fully. Grieg’s Lyric Pieces can seem slight on the page. In performances like these, they reveal their true stature.
