Album of the Day 1/23/11

Every day our 1000 best albums of all time countdown continues, all the way to #1. Sunday’s is #737:

Grieg – The Peer Gynt Suites: Malmo Symphony Orchestra/Bjarte Engeset

A heavy metal classic from 1875 – that’s when Edvard Grieg wrote a bunch of theme music (a few segments written for a massive choir) for the Henrik Ibsen play. Later he divided up the hits into a couple of suites, the first being the one pretty much everybody knows: the sleepily optimistic morning theme, haunting ambient dirge Aase’s Death, the creepy waltz Anitra’s Dance and In the Hall of the Mountain King, most recently done by Trent Reznor and in years past by Epica (ok), Apocalyptica (awesome, dude) and ELO (the heaviest of them all). The second suite includes the cinematic Abduction of the Bride, Ingrid’s Lament, more creepiness with the Arabian Dance, plus another funeral theme, some traveling music, a nasty shipwreck scene and a sad lament. In 2007, The Malmo Symphony under Bjarte Engeset did a spiritedly competent version of all this plus six orchestral songs including the “Mountain Thrall,” a narrative about trolls in the underbrush. It doesn’t quite match the truly epic sweep of Sir Thomas Beecham’s recording with the London Symphony Orchestra from the 1930s, but reissues of that one pop up in used vinyl stores from time to time (his 1957 stereo re-recording isn’t all that special). Here’s a random torrent.

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