Gladys Noon (Violin)
Bertram Harrison (Pianoforte)
To the majority of listeners Grieg is known mainly by his pianoforte pieces and one or two orchestral pieces, such as the Peer Gynt music, which are popular, but Chamber Music players know also that he wrote a few works in his early days which are welcome items in their repertory. Of these the three Sonatas for Pianoforte and Violin are probably the best known. This is the second of the three, and was written soon after his return to Norway from his Leipzig studentship. The work is highly melodious and foreshadowed much of the later idiom which made Grieg's music so fascinating. This idiom is built upon an appreciation of folk melodies, but not necessarily upon the adoption of the actual tnnes. Grieg so constructed his themes that while they were, in the majority of cases, original, they seemed almost indistinguishable from genuine folk music. This faculty combined with a rich and, in those days, an original harmonic scheme, made of Grieg the most popular composer for the pianoforte of a whole generation.