I have not previously come upon a record entirely devoted to Grieg's orchestral songs, and to that extent the record is of interest. A reason for its not having a precedent (to my knowledge) may be that there have been hardly enough authentic orchestral songs to fill a record. Grieg himself appears to have written only one work (Op. 32) for voice and orchestra; the six songs sung here by Marianne Hirsti were collected by him, two from his incidental music to Peer Gynt, the others from his songs with piano accompaniment, and orchestrated for publication in 1895. The rest of the programme consists of ten of the 12 songs of Op. 33, the order rearranged to constitute an outline of the poet Vinje's developing thoughts and experiences, and scored with some enlargement of the orchestra Grieg uses for his own arrangements, by Ragnar Soderlind.
To some degree the songs benefit from the richer sound of orchestral accompaniment. They are evocative of woodland and mountain landscapes, and the lyrics, Vinje's especially, tend to broaden their descriptions of nature with personal revelations about how depressed or hopeful the poet is feeling: the romanticism is grander than the length, or the folk-associations of Grieg's melodies, might suggest. Yet there is also a sense of his being in clothes that don't quite fit: the native gift is a gift to be simple, and here a good cloth is exchanged for evening dress off the peg. Another disadvantage is that both of the singers have light voices that would go better with piano accompaniment. Harald Bjorkoy is a high baritone with a pleasant timbre, several times threatened by the orchestra which shows up a lack of body and colour particularly in the lower half of the voice. Marianne Hirsti (whom we know best probably from her Blonde in Die Entfuhrung under Hogwood, 11/91) has a bright youthful purity well suited to the songs of Solveig, but a broader, nobler body of tone is needed in From Monte Pincio, and Henrik Wergeland wants more resources to capture the vigour of utterance and to match the unusual richness of orchestration. The orchestra plays with care for the shape and shading of phrases, and the quality of recorded sound is well looked-after.'