The complete piano works of Edvard Grieg, on 8 CDs, including recordings of the repertoire for piano duo, make up Brilliant Classics’ box-set release for April.

Håkon Austbø’s highly acclaimed Grieg collection, newly reissued and supplemented by a recent recording of the repertoire for piano four hands (Roberto Plano & Paola Del Negro), is currently the most comprehensive collection of the piano music of this poetic Scandinavian Romantic composer.

Although Edvard Grieg later composed a symphony and several other large-scale works, he found his most characteristic means of expression in the piano and in the songs without words that he called “Lyric Pieces”. These are essentially continuations of the Schumann/Mendelssohn tradition of instrumental tone-painting and musical settings of lyrical impulses. The works made Grieg an equally successful composer of songs, particularly after he married his cousin Nina and found in her the singer who best understood both him and his music.