Among the very few strictly lyric compositions for the piano by
Grieg,—a vein in which he was singularly unproductive for so eminent a
genius,—this spring song must unquestionably take rank as the best, the
most evenly sustained throughout, the most perfect in form and finish,
and decidedly the finest as well as most emotional in quality.
The opening notes of the right hand accompaniment fall light and silvery
as the soft drops of the April shower upon the waiting woods, when the
first faint shimmer of tender green begins to tint the tips of the
waving boughs. Then the melody enters in the left hand with subdued,
repressed intensity, warmly, sweetly vibrant, like the upper register of
that most passionate of instruments, the ’cello, a melody telling of
mild, languorous days and soft, dream-haunted nights, thrilled through
by the mysterious throbbing of a new life in the earth’s long-frozen
veins; telling of Nature, surprised but radiantly happy, awakening at
the touch of her ardent lover, the sudden spring, from her ice-locked
sleep, like the slumbering, frost-fettered bride in the old legend of
Siegfried and Brünnhilde; telling of summer joys and brightness begotten
of their union, of bird songs, sweeter for the long silence, of
many-tinted flowers springing in fragrant profusion where the cold white
drifts of winter lay but yesterday, as if the snowflakes had all been
transformed to blossoms by the magic kiss of the sun; of love as sudden
as the spring, as tenderly sweet as its violets, strong as its rushing
torrents, but alas! too often as transient as its fleeting glories. This
sudden, startling thought of pain and disillusion strikes sharply across
the mellow, golden current of the stream with a somber threatening note
of danger and distress rising to a swift, strong climax of indignant
protest or fierce defiance, a contrasting reactionary mood common to
certain minds, like those, for instance, of Byron and Heine, aptly
illustrated by the following lines, translated from the German of
Amentor:
“Sing not to me of spring, its flowers and azure skies,
Fleeting delusions all to cheat unwary eyes.
Talk not to me of love, its dreams of Paradise.
The charms of spring, the joys of love, are brilliant lies.”
But this dark mood is of but brief duration; it is soon exorcised by the
plenitude of sunshine and the exuberance of springtime happiness, and
the first melody returns with all its glowing beauty and seductive
sweetness, and with a fuller, more fluent, voluptuous accompaniment,
suggesting the mingled voices of many streams exulting in their new
freedom, or the irregular, intermittent sighs of May breezes, impatient
with having to rock all the baby leaves at once.
This composition is technically of only moderate difficulty, but
requires for its proper delivery a fine taste, great warmth of feeling,
and a telling, sensuous quality of tone for the melody, while the right
hand accompaniment in the first movement is kept almost infinitely light
and delicate. The sudden burst of passionate pain and resentment in the
climax should be given with extreme intensity and a decided acceleration
of tempo, as well as increase in power; followed by an abrupt fall to a
caressing pianissimo, and a long lingering hold on the final chord just
preceding the return of the first melody, to accentuate the renewal of
the softer, sunnier mood.