Presented at the Grieg Conference in Bergen June 2, 2007
Lionel Carley, Great Britain
Dr., President of the Delius Trust
Writer
Edvard Grieg and his critical and popular reception in England
When Edvard Grieg first came to England as a 19-year-old in the company of his parents and brother in the summer of 1862 he was, of course, completely unknown. When he returned twenty-six years later, in 1888, he was welcomed in London as a conquering hero. What then had happened in the intervening years to effect this transfiguration?
At a time when Grieg’s works had begun to be played in public in the Nordic countries and then in Germany, the English public at large did not know him. Apart, that is, from his earliest piano compositions, which on account of their playable compass were being taken up in musical homes in the 1870s and even being introduced into their lessons – in London at least – by the more progressive piano teachers of the day.
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Lionel Carley paper 2007