Grieg: Orchestral Music Vol 5 (complete incidental music to Peer Gynt)

"If you enjoyed Bjarte Engeset's excellent disc of the Peer Gynt Suites, then you'll certainly like this version of the complete incidental music as much if not more. Normally I prefer "extended excerpts" without the dialogue, but it's all so well done here that I find it impossible to complain...excellent soloists (especially the Solveig of soprano Ise Katharina Gericke), an enthusiastic chorus, and extremely atmospheric engineering...At Naxos' very reasonable price, this set becomes self-recommending."
(10/10 ClassicsToday)

Grieg's incidental music for Ibsen's play Peer Gynt (1874-5) won immediate success and ranks among his most enduringly popular compositions, its huge range of orchestral tone-colours and creative use of space captured on this recording by placing actors, chorus, and folk musicians both onstage and behind the scenes. Foran Sydens Kloster, composed in 1871 as an interlude for Bjørnson's heroic play Arnljot Gelline, and Bergliot, a monodrama written in the same year and orchestrated in 1875, reveal Grieg as a master composer of dramatic and lyrical stage music.