"Peer Gynt" Complete Play - Henrik Ibsen / Edvard Grieg

Orchestre de la Suisse Romande & Ensemble vocal "le Motet de Genève" conducted by Guillaume Tourniaire.

I - Act I: 0:00
II - Act II: 10:35
III - Act III: 41:05
IV - Act IV: 54:51
V - Act V: 1:27:54

Grieg's "Peer Gynt" was composed in 1875 as incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's play with the same name, written in 1867. The play was premiered (along the music) on February 24 of 1876 in Christiania (now Oslo). Grieg later created two suites from the incidental music, these becoming extremely popular to the point of appearing constantly in popular culture.

Edvard Grieg was one of the definitive leaders of Scandinavian music and his influence was great. Although composing many short piano pieces and chamber works, the work Grieg did for Henrik Ibsen stood out. When Ibsen asked Grieg to write music for the play in 1874, he reluctantly agreed. However, the task was much more difficult for Grieg than he imagined. "Peer Gynt progresses slowly," he wrote to a friend in August 1874, “and there is no possibility of having it finished by autumn. It is a terribly unmanageable subject.”

"The more he saturated his mind with the powerful poem, the more clearly he saw that he was the right man for a work of such witchery and so permeated with the Norwegian spirit," his wife wrote of him and his music. Even though the premiere was a "triumphant success", it prompted Grieg to complain bitterly that the Swedish management of the theatre had given him specifications as to the duration of each number and its order: "I was thus compelled to do patchwork... In no case I had the opportunity to write as I wanted... Hence the brevity of the pieces" he said.

Peer is a wild peasant boy and an incurable romantic, unable to distinguish between imagination and reality and content to pursue daydreams in his mountain hideaways. He constantly comes up with new «tall tales»; he always aspires to greater things than tending his neglected farm or marrying the rich peasant girl Ingrid. He appears, uninvited, at her wedding, where no one wants anything to do with the vain boaster. In a fit of rage, he seizes the opportunity to run away with the bride, only to send her back home after a brief amorous fling. For he cannot forget Solveig, the pretty maid who recently arrived in the village with her family but was not allowed to dance with him at the wedding. But for the moment he has to make himself scarce and flees into the mountains. There he finds himself beset by all imaginable temptations. He is swept into a whirlwind of symbolic figures and trolls in the Hall of the Mountain King, and forced to enter a marriage with the «Green-Clad Woman,» the Mountain King’s daughter. At last he escapes this imbroglio and builds a cabin for himself in solitude. When Solveig appears he is ready to begin a new life. But he has not yet rid himself of his past, which appears before him in the form of an old woman who hands him a misshapen child, claiming that it is his own. Peer resolves to leave Solveig and to set out into the great wide world, still thinking himself unworthy of her.

Years pass, and Peer has become rich in the slave trade. Surrounded by friends from many countries, he seeks to be made emperor – with the help of his and their money. But no sooner does he reach the coast of Morocco than he is waylaid by his companions, who sail off on his own yacht without him. Abandoned in the desert, he stumbles upon a set of richly bejewelled oriental clothes, which induces the local Arab population to treat him as a prophet. Now Peer enjoys high esteem and the greatest of honours, but he has still not found his true self. He resumes his journeys and meets Professor Begriffenfeldt, who takes him to his mental asylum in Cairo. Here the inmates proclaim him to be «Emperor of Himself,» although his true self continues to elude him. Finally Peer returns to his native country, a broken and aged man. His ship founders on the coast, but he is able to swim ashore. He feels a yearning for the mountains and his cabin. Already he seems to hear Solveig’s voice in the distance and vaguely realizes that she is his true destination. But no sooner has he done so than the Button Molder intervenes to recast him: he has been neither one thing nor the other, and it is time that he become himself. But Peer knows perfectly well what he is: a bad man. Finally he stands before Solveig, who has spent her long life waiting for him. Shocked, he now acknowledges his greatest sin, one that he has previously failed to list in his catalogue. Shriven by the all-consuming power of love, he collapses before the beloved of his youth.

Picture: "Peer before the King of Trolls" (1936) by the English illustrator Arthur Rackham.

Sources: https://bit.ly/3CKQw5V and https://bit.ly/3YhdWbc

To check the score: https://bit.ly/3AZQR3a