In the summer of 1868, Grieg wrote his
Piano Concerto in A minor while on holiday in Denmark.
Edmund Neupert gave the concerto its premiere performance on 3 April 1869 at the Casino Theatre in Copenhagen. Grieg himself was unable to be there due to conducting commitments in
Christiania (now Oslo). In 1868,
Franz Liszt, who had not yet met Grieg, wrote a testimonial for him to the Norwegian Ministry of Education, which resulted in Grieg's obtaining a travel grant. The two men met in Rome in 1870. During Grieg's first visit, they examined Grieg's
Violin Sonata No. 1, which pleased Liszt greatly. On his second visit in April, Grieg brought with him the manuscript of his
Piano Concerto, which Liszt proceeded to sightread (including the orchestral arrangement). Liszt's rendition greatly impressed his audience, although Grieg said gently to him that he played the first movement too quickly. Liszt also gave Grieg some advice on
orchestration (for example, to give the melody of the second theme in the first movement to a solo trumpet, which Grieg himself chose not to accept). In the 1870s, he became friends with poet
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, who shared his interests in Norwegian self-government. Grieg set several of his poems to music, including
Landkjenning and
Sigurd Jorsalfar. Eventually, they decided on an opera based on King Olav Trygvason, but a dispute as to whether the music or lyrics should be created first led to Grieg's being diverted to working on incidental music for
Henrik Ibsen's play
Peer Gynt, which naturally offended Bjørnson. Eventually, their friendship resumed. The
incidental music composed for
Peer Gynt at the request of the author contributed to its success and separately became some of the composer's most familiar music arranged as orchestral suites. Grieg had close ties with the
Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra (Harmonien), and later became music director of the orchestra from 1880 to 1882. In 1888, Grieg met
Tchaikovsky in Leipzig. Grieg was impressed by Tchaikovsky, who thought very highly of Grieg's music, praising its beauty, originality and warmth. On 6 December 1897, Grieg and his wife performed some of his music at a
private concert at
Windsor Castle for
Queen Victoria and her court. Grieg was awarded two honorary doctorates, first by the
University of Cambridge in 1894 and the next from the
University of Oxford in 1906.
Later years The Norwegian government provided Grieg with a pension as he reached retirement age. In the spring of 1903, Grieg made nine 78-rpm
gramophone recordings of his piano music in Paris. All of these discs have been reissued on both LPs and CDs, despite limited fidelity. Grieg recorded
player piano music rolls for the Hupfeld Phonola piano-player system and
Welte-Mignon reproducing system, all of which survive and can be heard today. He also worked with the
Aeolian Company for its 'Autograph Metrostyle' piano roll series wherein he indicated the tempo mapping for many of his pieces. In 1899, Grieg cancelled his concerts in France in protest of the
Dreyfus affair, an
antisemitic scandal that was roiling French politics at the time. Regarding this scandal, Grieg had written that he hoped that the French might "Soon return to the spirit of 1789, when the French republic declared that it would defend basic human rights." As a result of his statements concerning the affair, he became the target of much French
hate mail that day. In 1906, he met the composer and pianist
Percy Grainger in London. Grainger was a great admirer of Grieg's music and a strong empathy was quickly established. In a 1907 interview, Grieg stated: "I have written Norwegian Peasant Dances that no one in my country can play, and here comes this Australian who plays them as they ought to be played! He is a genius that we Scandinavians cannot do other than love." Edvard Grieg died at the Municipal Hospital in Bergen, Norway, on 4 September 1907 at age 64 from
heart failure. He had suffered a long period of illness. His last words were "Well, if it must be so." The funeral drew between 30,000 and 40,000 people to the streets of his home town to honor him. Obeying his wish, his own
Funeral March in Memory of Rikard Nordraak was played with orchestration by his friend
Johan Halvorsen, who had married Grieg's niece. In addition, the
Funeral March movement from
Chopin's
Piano Sonata No. 2 was played. Grieg was
cremated in the first Norwegian
crematorium opened in Bergen just that year, and his ashes were entombed in a mountain crypt near his house, Troldhaugen. After the death of his wife, her ashes were placed alongside his. A century after his death, Grieg's legacy extends beyond the field of music. There is a
large sculpture of Grieg in
Seattle, while one of the largest hotels in Bergen (his hometown) is named Quality Hotel Edvard Grieg and a large crater on the planet
Mercury is named after Grieg. ==Music==