John McCabe plays Grieg

SOMM is pleased to announce that with help from Monica McCabe and Robert Matthew-Walker a second example of John McCabe’s matchless pianism has now been unearthed. The old and partly damaged tapes of Grieg’s Slåtter and Stimmungen  which McCabe recorded with engineer Bob Auger on RCA Gold Seal in 1978, have been lovingly restored by SOMM’s expert engineers, Martin Nichols and Paul Arden-Taylor. The resulting sound has added clarity but the pliable, warm analogue sound many people miss from the old vinyl days is still remarkably present!

Grieg was the first great composer in the late 1880s to travel around Norway collecting folk tunes from the rural population and these proved to be a genuine source of inspiration to him. The hardanger fiddle player Knut Dale had suggested to Grieg that some of the traditional fiddle tunes should be noted down properly to save them for posterity.  By the end of 1902 Grieg had finished his work, which he named Slåtter, Norwegian Peasant Dances. The Slåtter and Stimmungen (Moods) were the two last sets of piano pieces Grieg completed, two years before his death. The latter is essentially an extra book of Lyric Pieces in manner, written in 1905. They represent a delightful kaleidoscope of moods and they sum up many aspects of Grieg’s pianistic art.

For John McCabe, as his original note for these recordings makes clear, Grieg was a far more significant figure than popular appreciation would suggest and these recordings came as quite revelatory in the early 1980s to wider audiences outside of the inner circle of specialists in Norwegian music.

John McCabe’s distinguished career as both composer and pianist established him as one of Britain’s leading classical musicians, with an international reputation in both fields. His set of the complete Haydn Piano Sonatas, recorded in the 1970s, still stands as a landmark. His devotion to music led McCabe to explore and perform the work of composers of many different kinds  – Bax, Grieg, Schubert, Hindemith, Howells, Copland and Schumann are among those whose work he recorded. He was deeply interested in contemporary music also, and performed and promoted with great generosity the work of his fellow composers as well as that of younger composers. He also made outstanding recordings of his own piano music.

John McCabe was appointed CBE for services to British music in 1985, and in 2006 the Incorporated Society of Musicians honoured him with their Distinguished Musician Award. In May 2014 he was the recipient of the British Academy of Songwriters and Authors IVOR Award, while the Iles Medal was awarded to him in September 2014 for services to the brass band movement.