If, based on his most popular pieces, you've come to the conclusion that Grieg was something of a musical wimp, then you really need to hear this sensational disc. The Funeral March for Rikard Nordraak offers about eight minutes of orchestral Sturm und Drang as intense as anything by Berlioz or Mahler; and as recorded here it sounds like a tone poem of Jon Leifs, with earth-shaking percussion and cataclysmic brass. The melodrama Bergliot also deserves to be better known. Now technically "melodrama" merely means spoken dialog over music, but narrator Gorild Mauseth, who quite appropriately recites the text like a paranoid schizophrenic madwoman who just went off her meds, must be aware of the more popular definition of the term, and she makes this one of Grieg's major achievements and a truly gripping listening experience.

Hakan Hagegard provides an equally impressive contribution to The Mountain Thrall (Den Bergtekne) and Landkjenning (Land Sighting), and he swaggers heroically in the Sigurd Jorsalfar songs that flesh out the more popular suite. Long eclipsed by the popularity of Peer Gynt, this earlier incidental work also reveals Grieg as a composer of ebullience and real backbone, especially when the great Homage March gets a "pedals to the metal" reading such as this. I can't imagine finer interpretations than those offered by conductor Ole Kristian Ruud and a clearly energized Bergen Philharmonic. Sonically this production features demonstration quality both in stereo and SACD multi-channel formats, and it's good to report that (unlike earlier issues in this series) BIS seems to have figured out how to make surround sound recordings that lose nothing in dynamic range or impact. Stunning! [7/30/2004]

--David Hurwitz