Below, we are happy to share some of our ideas behind Crossing Grieg - Opus 72 reimagined. Insights on each piece will be updated along with the release of the first single tracks. The complete album is expected on June 26. [general info on the project here].
___________________________
7. RØTNAMS KNUT
Here we let the fiddle start the tune in all its groovy rock'n roll way, and let the piano enter by swimming in its wake. That's the way to get the right rhytmic energy from the beginning, without being tempted to small irregularities, carried away by Grieg's left hand figures. Here from the transition to Grieg:
About the slått itself: Håkon chose a variant slightly different from Halvorsen/Grieg, one has been widely used from around 1900 onwards by fiddlers from various regions, actually more as a concert piece than for dancing. As the fiddle returns with a vengeance after some Grieg piano bashing, we can hear it with our own piano accompaniment, derived from Grieg's final ascending chord sequence:
What happened in end of the passage you just heard, was a gradual takeover by the piano, inspired by the lydian tonality of the fiddle, expanded by Nils Henrik with more and more major seconds, becoming major thirds, eventually losing the sense of tonality completely in order to clear the table for the minor section (See score example below)
This middle section with its transformation of the tune into a slow melody in minor key is entirely Grieg’s contribution, a typical trait of his and not part of the traditional slått. Listen to this section's middle part in F major where we include the fiddle, keeping strictly Lydian (with B naturals) like Grieg, even omitting the one occurrence of a Bb in his harmonisation at the end of the phrase.
Grieg's reprise of the main section is not included - in our concerts we prefer to go straight to the next slått, to keep the flow.
Fun fact on Røtnams Knut: The title refers to Knut Rotneim (1809–1851), a famous folk dancer from Hallingdal. This is perhaps the Hardanger fiddle folk tune with the most variants across the country. One of these was included by Grieg in his Album for Male Voices (Op. 30:12), along with the lyrics associated with the tune, which recount the dancing skills and extraordinary powers of ‘Røtnamsknut’.
12. BRUREMARSJ FRA TELEMARK / WEDDING MARCH FROM TELEMARK
Every track of Crossing Grieg contains its own solutions to the challenge we set ourselves: to explore how the original Hardanger fiddle slåtter can be merged with Edvard Grieg's piano adaptions, keeping interesting characteristics from both while creating a new, combined musical flow.
In this Wedding March we choose to enter the music gently and gradually from both sides, through improvisation and by using only selected elements from Grieg's piano version.
At the start, the fiddle gradually improvises its way into the slått.
(bars 1-7)
After 16 bars the fiddle has found the slått and plays it normally:
(the start of the traditional Wedding March)
The piano gradually moves towards Grieg's original, in a simplified version that retains the rhythmic character and a few pivotal notes.
At the start of next sound sample, a little detour to temporarily include some of Grieg's original romantic-style harmony:
(last 4 bars of 1st section, and start of 2nd section)
What you then heard (after these 4 bars) is the middle section of the March where, Compared to Grieg’s version, the fiddle melody has been transposed up one octave, as traditionally played on the fiddle and as notated by Halvorsen in the transcriptions he wrote down for Grieg. See illustration below.
The bass line from bar 15, which in Grieg's piece is rather dominating (repeated four-note pattern in pedal-point style), is in our version continuously shifted up and down in octaves, allowing the folk tune to emerge and the sonority of the Hardanger fiddle to project in a more varied way.
We keep the original Grieg in bars 24–31 and from 41 to the end.
Listen to the whole piece in the youtube link below!
Stay tuned for more updates - next single out on June 5!