Grieg, Edvard
Modern Synger (a Mother Sings)
They had one child together. But their budding happiness was short-lived, literally alas. In Edvard Griegs life, fate struck hard blows more than once. For shortly after Alexandra died, barely one year old, Griegs wife Nina Hagerup miscarried. "It is hard to watch the hope of ones life lowered into the earth, and it took time and quiet to recover from the pain," Grieg wrote shortly after the funeral. "But thank God, if one has something to live for one does not easily fall apart; and art surely has - more than many other things - this soothing power that allays all sorrow!" As this CD will show, the composer, the lied was one of the ways of the composer, and indeed the most important one, that helped him cope with the dramatic events in his life, both ups and downs. The relation between mother and child is a kind of leitmotif in Edvard Griegs lied oeuvre. It is the theme that runs through this CD. Melancholy, joy, sadness, it is all here. A few pieces for piano solo make sure that the program is balanced, with variation as well as coherence. Hendrickje Van Kerckhove sings on the major opera stages of Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. She is also renowned as a performer of baroque music and of the repertoire of lied and mlodie. Nicolas Callot teaches piano and chamber music at the Tilburg Conservatory and at the High School for the Arts in Antwerp. Theduo he forms with Lucas Blondeel is much appreciated.