Percy Grainger
Percy Aldridge Grainger (1882–1961) was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist. A brilliant folk-song collector and arranger, he was also a restless experimenter whose work ranged from tuneful percussion to Free Music machines that foreshadowed electronic synthesis.
Born in Brighton, Victoria, he left Australia as a boy for study in Frankfurt, then made his name in London as a society and concert pianist while collecting English folk songs with a phonograph. Friendship with Grieg deepened his feeling for national music; settings such as Country Gardens, Molly on the Shore and Shepherd’s Hey later carried his name around the world.
From 1914 he lived in the United States, taking citizenship yet always calling himself Australian. Concert tours and teaching filled the decades; in the 1930s he founded the Grainger Museum in Melbourne as an archive of his life and work. He championed music beyond the European mainstream and, late in life, pursued Free Music unbound by fixed pitch or metre—sketches realised long afterwards on Full Spectrum (MD 3027).
His complete music for tuneful percussion, played on instruments he designed and left to the museum, is heard on Tuneful Percussion (MD 3222). Songs, brass and piano pieces, and transcriptions continue to appear across the catalogue, from art-song recitals to organ, cello and chamber programmes.
Percy Grainger is featured on the following titles
Tuneful Percussion
One of International Record Review’s “Best Discs of 2000”, and nominated for Best Classical CD at the 2001 ARIA Awards. Woof! play Grainger’s complete music for tuneful percussion on authentic instruments, including his own staff bells and steel marimba, with many works previously unrecorded.
Arranger
Full Spectrum
An early Move survey of Australian computer and digital music from the 1970s, opening with Barry Conyngham's realisation of Percy Grainger's Free Music 1 and 2, and continuing with works by Tristram Cary, Warren Burt and Darius Clynes.
Compositions by Percy Grainger also appear on
Bon Voyage!
Igor and Olga Piano Duo's debut album charts a piano-four-hands itinerary from Bernstein's America through Brahms, Rachmaninov, Gavrilin, Ravel and Moszkowski to Grainger's Faeroese dance.
Organ at the Opera
One of Move's all-time best sellers. Sydney City organist Robert Ampt and Amy Johansen play popular organ duets on the famous Ronald Sharp organ in the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall.
Teamwork
An eminently listenable collection of piano music for four and six hands. Romantic, brilliant and companionable by turns, it is an exciting, all-stops-out tour de force from the Team of Pianists.
Arranger
Melbourne Sounds Grand
Thomas Heywood’s first commercial recording presents the Melbourne Town Hall Grand Concert Organ in a grand-concert programme of virtuoso showpieces and transcriptions, chosen to display its orchestral colour, dynamics and power.
I Can Tell The World
Saucy Purcell rounds, madrigals, drinking songs, spirituals and English folk settings from one of Australia's finest choirs, directed by Douglas Lawrence.
Tone-stuffs
The Melbourne Brass Ensemble presents a varied brass-quintet programme of Australian works alongside Renaissance and Baroque arrangements. The playing is dynamic and accurate, with a full sound and a true-to-life concert-hall acoustic.
Music for Strings
String orchestra music from Wolf-Ferrari and Grieg to Britten, Grainger and living Australian voices. Gerald Gentry leads the Southern Cross Philharmonia, with Amir Farid at the piano in Grainger’s clog-dance romp.
Burns and Beyond
This recording, Burns and Beyond, gathers art songs for voice and modern piano drawn from Robert Burns, and includes Percy Grainger’s Three Scotch Folksongs, built on ancient Scottish tunes.
Sparkling Keys
Sparkling Keys celebrates the creative partnership of the National Trust and the Team of Pianists. Over a decade that partnership produced Twilight Chamber Music at Rippon Lea and concerts at Como, Labassa, Illawarra and Barwon Park.
Worlds Apart
Worlds Apart gathers music for piano duet, two and three pianos from France and Australia. At its centre is the first Australian recording of Max Bruch’s Concerto for two pianos and orchestra.
Hamilton
The Team of Pianists present a programme of excellent piano works for solo, duo and two pianos, spanning popular classics and Australian repertoire.