Lyric Pieces


Lyric Pieces is a collection of 66 short pieces for solo piano written by Edvard Grieg. They were published in 10 volumes, from 1867 to 1901. The collection includes several of his best known pieces, such as Wedding Day at Troldhaugen, To Spring, March of the Trolls, and Butterfly.
The theme of the first piece in the set, Arietta, was one of the composer's favorite melodies. He used it to complete the cycle in his very last lyric piece, Remembrances — this time as a waltz.
In 2002, Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes recorded a CD with 24 of the lyric pieces on Grieg's own 1892 Steinway grand piano at Troldhaugen, the composer's residence. The first complete recording of the Lyric Pieces was recorded and released in the Soviet Union by Alexander Goldenweiser in the 1950s. Among other notable pianists to make recordings of the collection are Isabel Mourão, Walter Gieseking, Sviatoslav Richter, Emil Gilels, Eva Knardahl, Andrei Gavrilov, Håkon Austbø, Einar Steen-Nøkleberg, Irina Mejoueva, Gerhard Oppitz, Stephen Hough, Daniel Levy and Javier Perianes. A few recordings and piano rolls of Grieg himself performing also exist, and they have been published by the Norwegian record label Simax.
Four of the six pieces from Book V, Op. 54, were orchestrated under the title of Lyric Suite. Both Grieg and Anton Seidl had a hand in the orchestrations. Grieg also orchestrated two of the pieces from Book IX, Op. 68.

Complete listing

Even though it was published in several volumes, some publishers, such as Edition Peters, have numbered the pieces as a whole, thereby numbering the 66 pieces in order, instead of numbering each volume individually. The movement list is as follows:
Book I, Op. 12 :
Book II, Op. 38 :
Book III, Op. 43 :
Book IV, Op. 47 :
Book V, Op. 54 :
Book VI, Op. 57 :
Book VII, Op. 62 :
Book VIII, Op. 65 :
Book IX, Op. 68 :
Book X, Op. 71 :