Grainger, Grieg and Folksong

When Danish cellist Herman Sandby, introduced Edvard Grieg to some of Percy Grainger’s folk-song arrangements, Grieg liked what he saw.  Grieg sent Grainger an autographed photograph with a note complimenting him on his “splendid folk-song settings for mixed voices”.  When they met several years later, Grainger played two of Grieg’s Norwegian Peasant Dances “in a dazzling manner”, according to the composer, who recorded in his diary: “Yes, he is brilliant, that’s for sure. I am happy about having gained a young friend such as he.” Grainger became a Grieg protégé and performed Grieg’s music for the rest of his life.

This lecture is presented by Barry Peter Ould co-founder of  The Percy Grainger Society (UK) with David Tall in 1978 of which he is now Chairman.  In 1987, Mr. Ould formed his Bardic Edition music publishing house which has since published numerous editions of Grainger’s music. He is President of the International Percy Grainger Society as well as being administrator and UK representative for the Grainger Estate. As a leading world authority on Grainger’s music, he has and continues to work on editing numerous Grainger works which have been used in recordings by Chandos Records amongst many others, and more recently for Naxos Records complete edition of Grainger’s works for Wind Band. He also contributed a major catalog of Grainger’s compositions for the New Percy Grainger Companion (Boydell 2010) which he intends to broaden into a catalogue raisonné.