Grieg: Peer Gynt Suites / Holberg Suite / Norwegian Dances / etc

In the years preceding the Second World War it was fashionable to speak of Edvard Grieg (1843- 1907) in a condescending and even very critical manner. Sometimes his music was even dismissed as being 'hackneyed'. Yet in the first decades of the 20th century Grieg had enjoyed a tremendous vogue. The great pianists played his concerto, some of his more than 140 songs graced the programmes of the internationally recognised song recitalists, and his string quartet and the third violin sonata were played all over. The Peer Gynt suites and the Lyric Suite, Op. 54, were favourites in the repertory of popular symphony and Promenade concerts. They were considered indispensable for garden concerts and for what in Germany became stigmatised as 'Grove and Meadow' ('Wald und Wiesen Programm') offerings, in which appeared the overture to Hérold's Zampa, the Strauss waltzes, the Hungarian Rhapsodies Nos. 1 and 2 by Liszt, and a selection by Richard Wagner.

The Elite Recordings for VOX by legendary producers Marc Aubort and Joanna Nickrenz are considered by audiophiles to be amongst the finest sounding examples of orchestral recordings