Grieg: Lyric Pieces - Janina Fialkowska

Classic FM Drive Featured Album, 6 July 2015, after 6pm.

Hot on the heels of Stephen Hough’s excellent renditions of Grieg’s Lyric Pieces comes this less flamboyant but nonetheless elegant collection from the Canadian pianist, Janina Fialkowska.

She has made a different selection from Hough of Grieg's 66 piano pieces, although some do overlap. To each of them, including in the most famous of them - the Wedding Day at Troldhaugen - she brings an underlying sense of melancholy. 

Perhaps it is because Fialkowska is best known as an interpreter of the piano music of the Romantic era that her take on Grieg brings out the Nordic noir. Beautifully and intelligently played, nevertheless.