1B1, Jan Bj�ranger, Christian Ihle Hadland & Erlend Skomsvoll - Grieg: Holberg Variations

The highly-regarded Ensemble 1B1 have teamed up with jazz musician and composer Erlend Skomsvoll and Norway's exciting young pianist Christian Ihle Hadland to pay tribute to Edvard Grieg. The disc features three different arrangements of the composer's much-loved Holberg Suite, the original version for solo piano, Grieg's own adaptation for strings, and a performance of an improvisatory work by Skomsvoll based around the piece.

Edvard Grieg's Holberg Suite subtitled Suite in olden style consists of five movements based on eighteenth century dance forms. It was written in 1884 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Danish-Norwegian humanist playwright Ludvig Holberg. The suite was originally composed for the piano, but a year later arranged by the composer for string orchestra. The disc opens with the well-known string version and continues with a performance of the original piano piece by Christian Ihle Hadland. Hadland's interpretation conjures up a multitude of rhythmic and timbral nuances, lifting the original Holberg Suite into the great European piano tradition. The album concludes with jazz musician and composer Erlend Skomsvoll's Holberg Variations. Skomsoll takes the iconic themes and musical phrases of the suite and leads the string orchestra in an improvisational game, where the motifs get transformed into pulsating passages with lingering textures.

Personnel: 1B1, Jan Bj�ranger (conductor), Christian Ihle Hadland (piano), Erlend Skomsvoll (piano)