EDVARD GRIEG " LAST SPRING " ( Poema sinfonico )

EDVARD GRIEG " LAST SPRING " MODERN TIMES ORCHESTRA Dir JOEL SPIGELMAN
RECORDED MOSCOW CONSERVATORI .1999.

Dictionary of Unitarian &  Universalist Biography – ‘Edvard and Nina Grieg’ by Peter Hughes November 4, 2004                

In his last year Grieg made another composer friend, the Australian-born Percy Grainger, who impressed him with his British folk-song arrangements and his playing of the Grieg concerto. The two planned to perform the piece at the Leeds Festival in England in 1907, but Grieg was hospitalized the day before he was scheduled to embark. He died the following morning.

More than fifty thousand people witnessed Grieg's funeral procession. "The Funeral March for Rikard Nordraak" (Grieg's choice) and The Last Spring were played at his graveside. His ashes were later moved to a cliff-side grotto overlooking the fjord at Troldhaugen.

Nina lived in Denmark for nearly thirty years after Edvard died. There she belonged to the Free Church Society (Unitarian) in Copenhagen, 1908-35. Although Nina had come to adopt many of her husband's religious opinions, she did not share Edvard's intense dislike of state churches.

She hoped that one day the Danish Lutheran Church, more liberal than the Norwegian one, would become broad enough to include Unitarians. She donated to the Unitarian church building fund and organized and performed in concerts to raise money for an organ. Thorvald Kierkegaard, the Danish Unitarian minister, conducted her funeral ceremonies in Copenhagen. Her ashes are now united with her husband's at Troldhaugen.