Grieg Collection (Anitras Dance-A Dream-Norwegian Dance nr1) (tuba and piano)

Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) spent the summer of 1881 in Lofthus, Hardanger. For the past year he had been the conductor of the Harmonien orchestra in Bergen, and had been so absorbed by his work there that he had almost stopped composing. Now his inspiration returned, and before long he had composed his four Norwegian Dances. His starting point was Ludwig M. Lindeman’s important collection of folk melodies – and for the Norwegian Dance No. 1 he chose melody No. 302, although he treated the original with considerable freedom. Even though he composed the dances for piano four hands, the music seems to be crying out for orchestral sonority; Grieg himself tried to orchestrate the dances, but ultimately abandoned the attempt. Many others have since tried their luck, with varying degrees of success, and hear is Øystein Baadsvik’s own transformation of the first dance for tuba and strings. Anitra’s Dance is part of the music to Henrik Ibsen’s drama Peer Gynt – one of the most ambitious, but also one of the most troublesome tasks that Grieg ever undertook. ‘You don’t believe, do you, that I had any choice in the matter? I was asked by Ibsen in spring, and of course I rebelled at the thought of setting this must unmusical of subjects to music. It all hangs over me like a nightmare’, the composer wrote to his friend Bjørnstjerne Bjørnsson in October 1874. Nevertheless, the result was a triumph. The fourth act is set on the north coast of Africa, where Peer meets a Bedouin chief in the heat of the desert. He falls for the chief’s daughter, Anitra, who dances enticingly for him.