Today I am going to share with you an excerpt from Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in B Minor.
Edvard Grieg only completed (key word) one concerto during his life, the Concerto in A Minor, which is one of the most popular and most-performed concertos today. Sergei Rachmaninoff remarked that Grieg’s A minor concerto was the best concerto ever written. It was initially considered an unimportant work but gained popularity in the 20th century, popularized by pianist Arthur Rubinstein. I’ll share a few performances of the A Minor below.
Grieg also started work on another concerto, in B minor, but he never completed it and left only sketches and fragments behind. Norwegian composer Helge Evju assembled these fragments into a wonderful piece. I love this relatively unknown concerto.
Here is my favorite excerpt from the B minor concerto:
Here is the full concerto performed Helge Evju:
While searching for Evju’s version I found another version of the B minor concerto completed by Laurent Beekmans:
The Concerto in A Minor – Arthur Rubenstein
The Concerto in A Minor – Evgeniy Kissin
