Edvard Grieg - What Price Immortality ?

Starring: Philipp Brammer, Staffan Scheja Director: Thomas Olofsson Original UK Premiere: 1999 Dvd Release: 5th November, 2001 Number Of Discs: 1 Format: PAL, Widescreen, Region 2 Encoding Subtitled In: Spanish

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Edvard Hagerup Grieg was a Norwegian composer & pianist of partial Scottish descent. He was born & died in Bergen. He married his first cousin, Nina Hagerup, in 1867. Educated at the Leipzig Conservatory & later by the Danish composer Niels W Gade, Grieg is noted as a nationalist composer, drawing inspiration from Norwegian folk music. Early works include a symphony & a piano sonata. He also wrote three sonatas for piano & violin & his many short pieces for piano led some to call him the Chopin of the north. Among Griegs best-known pieces are his Piano Concerto in A minor, the Holberg Suite & ten volumes of Lyric Pieces. He is also well known for his incidental music to Henrik Ibsen s play Peer Gynt, especially for Morning Mood & In the Hall of the Mountain King, which appears in many places throughout popular culture. The former was a favorite of Carl Stalling who often used it for morning establishing shots in Warner Bros. cartoons; the latter was famously used in the 1931 film M, in which Peter Lorre s character, a serial killer who preys on children, whistles it.

DVD Extras: the stereo sound & anamorphically enhanced 1.77:1 image are both very good, with the latter showing just occasional grain. Colours & detail levels are excellent. There are no extras, only Spanish subtitles & a choice of English, French & German voiceovers. Trailers for a further five Arthaus DVDs are included.

A 70-minute co-production between various European TV companies Edvard Grieg: What Price Immortality? seeks to reveal the man behind the iconic image of Norways great national composer. Death in Venice is immediately called to mind as the narrative unfolds through the memories of an elderly Grieg sitting alone on the deck of a boat, particularly in sequences which suggest a more-than-platonic love for fellow composer Rikard Nordraak. The memory structure likewise suggests the Proust adaptation Time Regained, from the same year, while comparison can also be drawn with Ken Russells TV composer biopics, particularly the elegiac Song of Summer .

Set around performances of two of Griegs most personal works, the piano Ballade & the String Quartet, director Thomas Olofsson effectively creates a silent movie where the storytelling is predominantly visual, eloquently assisted by Derek Jacobi as the voice of the composer. Grieg is played by various actors at different ages, most notably by the distinguished pianist Staffan Scheja, while even without uttering a word Claudia Z makes a charismatic impression as Griegs wife, Nina. Elegantly composed & lit, this beautiful, resolutely middle-brow film is ultimately far too derivative of previous art films to achieve artistic greatness of its own.

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