Grieg's Anitra's Dance — this was not written for the concert hall but as music for a play. In 1874 Ibsen wrote asking Grieg to provide music for Peer Gynt; he agreed, then spent a year and a half on it and hated the work. Anitra is a desert chieftain's daughter in the play, and this is the dance she performs for the hero. It stays on tiptoe throughout, with 96 grace notes all in the right hand, over three and a half minutes. The first two bars are slow; it only really begins at bar 3. The full piano score is on screen, note by note.
Ibsen wrote to ask, he said yes, and he regretted it
In 1874 Ibsen wrote to Grieg asking him to provide stage music for the dramatic poem Peer Gynt — written to be read, it needed music to be staged. Grieg, thirty-one, agreed.
Then he spent a year and a half on it and found it miserable. His letters call it a dreadful commission and admit that some scenes defeated him entirely. The finished score runs to more than twenty numbers, and the play was premiered in Oslo in 1876.
Who is Anitra? In the play Peer Gynt wanders into the North African desert and is taken for a prophet by a local tribe; Anitra is the chieftain's daughter, and this is the dance she performs for him. When it is over she steals his money and his horse.
Grieg later drew the best numbers into two orchestral suites. The first, Op. 46, has four: Morning Mood, The Death of Åse, Anitra's Dance and In the Hall of the Mountain King — still the best known things he wrote. He made the piano versions himself, and this recording uses the piano solo.
The joke is that the job he disliked is the reason he is remembered. He wrote a piano concerto, sixty-six Lyric Pieces and a great many songs, and most people still know him for those four numbers from Peer Gynt.
On tiptoe all the way, and never once flat-footed
The first two bars are slow — the score says Adagio, with only a few notes, like someone calling for quiet. It begins properly at bar 3, where the tempo changes to a mazurka's and the music turns light.
Its distinguishing feature is that it never lands flat. A dance in three usually leans on the first beat, but the weight here keeps being moved away — the right hand is full of grace notes, ninety-six of them and all in that hand, each making the downbeat arrive a fraction late, while the left dabs at very quiet chords and barely speaks. What you hear is somebody on tiptoe.
After 0:49 the music goes up a step, the same dance figure moved higher; from 1:27 comes the busiest stretch, the grace notes crowding and the left hand starting to move.
From 2:06 it lifts once more, and from 2:43 it closes — the layers peel away, and the last two bars hold only a few notes, like a dancer backing into the dark.
It makes very good background: three and a half minutes, light, a regular three, and the volume stays in the lower half throughout. There is a little more motion in it than most background music, which suits work and afternoons.
One hundred and eight written bars become one hundred and seventy-three
108 written bars with repeats, opening out to 173 bars and 1,946 sounding notes, in 3/4 and A minor. There are 96 grace notes besides, all of them in the right hand. The score carries 189 dynamics, 50 hairpins and 2 pedal spans.
The tempo changes twice on the page: Adagio at bar 1, Tempo di Mazurka at bar 3, with ritard and Largo near the end. So the first two bars and the last few are slow and everything between is at dance speed.
Bar counts run between 2 and 17, averaging 11.2, a very flat distribution — this is a piece of steady density that works by rhythm and ornament rather than by swings of volume or texture.
Bars 22, 38, 104 and 171 hold 5, 4, 4 and 2 notes, the four clear dips in the piece and the joins between phrases.
The range is A1 to A6, five octaves, and the shortest note lasts 0.029 seconds — those are the grace notes.
The difficulty is ninety-six grace notes, all equally light
First, the grace notes must not grab. All ninety-six are in the right hand and each should slide rather than strike; one heavy grace note plants that beat and the tiptoe quality is gone.
Second, keep the left hand very light. It only marks the place, well below the right in volume; played as a standard three-beat accompaniment this becomes an ordinary waltz.
Third, do not lean on the first beat. A mazurka's weight often falls on the second or third, and it does here; follow the accents on the page rather than the three you are used to.
Fourth, keep the tempo steady. There is no room for rubato — slow down and the steps come apart. The Adagio at the start and the slowing at the end are written; do not add more in between.
Fifth, almost no pedal. There are two spans in the whole score, and clarity here comes from the fingers.
The tempo is 156 to the quarter. No metronome mark is printed in this source, where bar 1 carries only Adagio and bar 3 Tempo di Mazurka, so the figure comes from the conventional band for the marking, which runs 150 to 160. The Adagio of the first two bars sits at 72, and the ratio between the two is the source's own, not rescaled. The recording runs 3 minutes 27.
We rate this 4 out of 5.
The other three in the same suite
The first Peer Gynt suite, Op. 46, has four numbers: Morning Mood, the famous sunrise; The Death of Åse, a funeral for strings; this dance; and In the Hall of the Mountain King, the one that keeps speeding up. A second suite, Op. 55, includes the equally well-known Solveig's Song. None of the others has been made yet.
Grieg also wrote sixty-six Lyric Pieces, his main body of piano music, mostly between two and four minutes long and well suited to this channel. None has been made yet.
