CD: Grieg: Olav Trygvason; Orchestral Songs

The 30-minute fragment Olav Trygvason is all that remains of Grieg's only opera, planned in 1873 as a vast, nationalistic epic, dealing with the Norwegian conversion to Christianity and the subsequent building of Trondheim cathedral. Finding his librettist's working methods inimical, Grieg eventually abandoned the score, leaving only the prologue complete. Depicting a prophetess rousing pagan armies to frenzy prior to the Christians' arrival, it makes for hair-raising listening. The influence of Wagner's Lohengrin is discernible in some of the thematic material, but the balefully glittering orchestration, the pounding rhythms and often savage choral writing are pure Grieg, prefiguring the music he was to write for the trolls in Peer Gynt a year later.

The recording, conducted by Ole Kristian Ruud, has an almost shocking vividness: the playing and choral singing are wonderfully ferocious; Ingebjorg Kosmo is the very manic Prophetess. The 1895 Orchestral Songs, which form the coupling, have been better served elsewhere, however. Ruud's conducting is supple and finely nuanced, but Marita Solberg's chilly-sounding soprano won't, by any means, be to everyone's taste.