Goals

The association was founded in 1998 with the aim of establishing a memorial and meeting place in honour of Edvard Grieg in the former and since 2014 again current domicile of the music publisher C. F. Peters in Talstraße 10.

On November 7, 2005, the memorial and meeting place was inaugurated in an official ceremony. After almost seven years of dedicated work, the association had thus achieved one of its main goals.

However, the signs were not always in the green, one of the most important goals of the association to put into practice. "There were difficulties to overcome and hurdles to overcome. I would like to thank everyone involved for their constant commitment and dedication. Without their help we would not have been able to inaugurate our meeting place in 2005. Special thanks go to the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Berlin, VNG - Verbundnetz Gas AG Leipzig, the Royal Norwegian Honorary Consulate General in Leipzig and the City of Leipzig. They were and are indispensable partners for us", said the then association president and now honorary president Prof. Dr. Hella Brock on the occasion of the inauguration ceremony.

The opening was both an occasion for great joy and for setting new goals. These consist above all in filling the Grieg meeting place with life and in preserving and cultivating the memory of the Norwegian composer and making it accessible to a wide audience.

In addition to continuous opening hours, this also means regular events. These range from concerts and lectures to seminars and readings.

But Talstraße 10 is not only a place of encounter with Grieg and his music, but also a place of encounter between Norway and Germany. The regional group Central Germany of the German Norwegian Friendship Society uses (DNF) regularly uses the premises for their meetings.

Thanks to a generous donation, since 2019 the Begegnungsstätte has had an original portrait of Grieg by Eilif Peterssen (1890), which has been hanging in the music salon of the Begegnungsstätte ever since.

Since the summer of 2020, a grand piano from the Steinway company (built in 1901) has been standing in the rooms of the Grieg Meeting Place, enabling an authentic Grieg sound.

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Chronicle

2019

In March 2019, after long efforts, we were finally able to purchase the Grieg portrait of Eilif Peterssen. With this the association received its first original piece, which we proudly present in our music salon ever since. Finally, for the summer festival in May, the Oslo Brigademusikk music corps was our guest and gave our members a nice reception. Also in our regular concert program we promoted the German-Norwegian cultural exchange with concerts of the Grieg-Quartett Leipzig around the Norwegian Primaria Elisabeth Dingstad and the Gyldfeldt-Quartett around the Norwegian Primarius August Magnusson. Another highlight was the concert of the winner of the International Grieg Piano Competition 2018, Ryoma Takagi.

2018

The year 2018 was dedicated to our patron saint, and the 175th anniversary of Grieg's birth was celebrated. While in Norway on June 15th - Grieg's birthday - a nationwide TV program with all the composer's works was shown, we took the celebration as an opportunity to go public with a new design. We also expanded our concert programme. For a whole week we invited to concerts (among others in the Old City Hall in Leipzig and the University Church of St. Pauli), prominent guests came, among others the Norwegian Ambassador H.E. Petter Ølberg. The Leipzig University Orchestra also made it possible for us to perform Grieg's famous piano concerto. But there were also many highlights in our annual programme, such as the concert series with students at the HMT Leipzig, the lecture by board member Dr. Joachim Reisaus in the LOFFT theatre or the ballet performance by the Leipzig Opera in the music salon of the meeting place.

2017

A special highlight of the 2017 calendar year was the debut concert of the Leipzig Grieg Quartet around the Norwegian Primaria Elisabeth Dingstad. The four Gewandhaus musicians naturally played Grieg's only completed string quartet in G minor. Our Honorary President Hella Brock has handed over her private library to the Edvard Grieg Research Centre. 2017 also marked the 75th anniversary of the death of Henri Hinrichsen, the former publishing director of Edition Peters. Board member Dr. Joachim Reisaus reminded the audience of his eventful life with a lecture.

2016

The year 2016 was especially eventful apart from the regular concert programme. In February, the Edvard Grieg Research Unit, headed by board member Prof. Dr. Patrick Dinslage, moved into rooms at the Institute of Musicology at the University of Leipzig. This means that there is now also a spatial proximity between Grieg care in the museum and current Grieg research at the university. In March, our long-standing colleague Wolfgang Golzsch retired. He was succeeded by Mai Anne Nguyen and Christoph Siems, two students of the University of Leipzig. In October 2016 the 7th International Edvard Grieg Congress took place at the university with participants from 8 countries. The Grieg meeting place hosted a reception and caused enthusiasm among the international Grieg enthusiasts.

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