How Did Edvard Grieg Stop Conducting?

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Edvard Grieg was born July 15, 1843 in Bergen Norway, At 15 he attended the Leipzig Conservatory in Germany to study music. There he was exposed to the music of Schumann and Mendelssohn, who greatly influenced his style. Four years later, he emerged as a full fledged musician and began composing. It was at age 25 that Grieg composed one of his most famous and celebrated works; The Piano Concerto in A minor. The As the thunderous rolls of the timpani and the fortissimo A minor chords began this composition I could feel the confidence, power, and energy radiating from it. Throughout its duration, the piece held an air of power and energy, even during the slow, legato sections. I thought it was quite interesting that for being only 25 years old, Grieg was able to exude such confidence through his composition.
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All throughout the piece I could not stop “conducting.” I felt this need to be apart of the music in some way and the “conducting” helped me do that. The piano trills also made it intense and made me feel a bit on edge but not really in a bad way. I just felt like I had this bottled up intensity that I needed to express but I could not get out; Hence the “conducting.” The varying tempos added to the energy and also made the piece interesting and unpredictable in a very good way. While it was unpredictable it still had a form and an obvious melody so everything still made sense. This composition was also incredibly dynamic. It went from soft to loud very quickly but in a surprisingly smooth way. I do not think there were many, if any times the transitions from loud to soft or soft to loud were jarring or rigid. The dynamicity also made the piece very interesting and kept me on my toes. I enjoyed the lack of dissonance in this piece. When there is a lot of dissonance in a piece I do not usually connect to the piece or enjoy it very much and I kind of push it

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