Dimitri Leue . Kiyotaka Izumi

Hans Christian Andersen's fame during his lifetime did not rest on the fairytales that made him immortal, but rather on the librettos and music criticism he wrote. He was also good friends with that other great Scandinavian personality, Edvard Grieg. Together they founded a concert society in Copenhagen to promote new Scandinavian music. The Norwegian composer admired the lilt of Andersen's lyrical work and set many of his poems to music. The Dane's fairytales therefore go very well with Grieg's 'Lyric Pieces', a total of sixty-six miniatures with such imagination-firing titles as 'March of the Dwarves', 'Peace of the Woods', 'Phantom' and 'Fairy Dance'. A pianist and an actor reunite the two friends, coupling the weft of these evocative melodies with the warp of two of Andersen's best spine-chilling fairy stories, 'The Shadow' and 'The wild Swans'. Andersen's fairytale world is conjured up by the born storyteller Dimitri Leue. He and the poetic pianist Kiyotaka Izumi guarantee of a fine feast of musical storytelling.