Posted on

Beautifully restored kirkyard gates greet Grieg visitors at Rathen

It took the patient removal of seven layers of paint and the careful removal of a splinter to bring the old kirkyard gates at Rathen, site of the Grieg ancestral gravestone, back to their former glory. But, for local volunteer and maintenance expert, Alex Buchan, it was worth it. And, thanks to his dedicated work, a Grieg Society of Scotland visitor signboard has a grand new home on the gates, too.

The gates to Rathen Old Kirkyard, beautifully restored by skilled local volunteer Alex Buchan, pictured here with a friendly troll gifted to his family by Norwegian visitors some years back. (images: kind permission Alex Buchan)

It all started when Alex, recently retired from working offshore in the North Sea, obtained permission from Aberdeenshire Council to mount our Grieg Society of Scotland signboard on the gates to St Ethernan’s kirkyard at Rathen, where composer Grieg’s paternal ancestors lie buried.

We had previously presented the signboard to the community at a little ceremony at Rathen West Parish Church, with the local primary schoolchildren and Troldhaugens Venner (Friends of the Edvard Grieg Museum, Bergen) in attendance. Now the sign was going to find its outdoor home.

Music, heritage and friendship – the children of Rathen Primary School, Troldhaugens Venner (Friends of the Edvard Grieg Museum, Bergen) and the Grieg Society of Scotland meet together in the inspirational space of Rathen West Parish Kirk in summer 2023. (image: Grieg Society of Scotland)

A major task

But what looked to Alex a simple job to fix the signboard to the gates turned into a major task. ‘I was dismayed at the condition of the gate coatings, they looked terrible’ Alex tells us. Years and years of Scottish weather had caused the paint to crust and peel. And so, resolving to remedy the situation, he set to work. But that meant the removal of 4 layers of black paint, 3 of green and 1 orange to get back to a good surface from which to begin repainting, a process that took, as Alex remarks ‘much longer than I anticipated’!

Magnificent result

It also cost him a small injury – a splinter of old paint necessitating surgical removal. But what a magnificent result! And thanks to Alex’s great practical skills, visitors to Rathen can now learn about Edvard Grieg’s local forebears and their gravestone in the kirkyard, all from our signboard.

It’s a job very well done. Yet it’s not the end of the story. More needs to be done, and soon, to conserve and develop the tiny north-east Scottish village’s unique cultural heritage and links with Grieg.

And that work involves major financial investment.

The gates to Rathen Old Kirkyard before and after restoration, plus the newly installed Grieg Society of Scotland signboard. Through the gates lie the ruins of St Ethernan’s kirk and the gravestone of composer Grieg’s paternal forbears. (images: with kind permission Alex Buchan)

An emerging new challenge

Alex, who hails from nearby Cairnbulg, has lived in Rathen for 25 years and not only takes an active interest in Rathen’s old kirkyard but was, up until this year, an Elder and also Fabric Maintenance Convener at Rathen West Parish Church, which the Grieg Society of Scotland has been privileged to use both as venue to welcome visitors and occasional base for its activities.

But the future of the building is uncertain, and that brings an emerging new challege.

The church, an imposing granite building with tall spire, stands on an elevated spot close by the old kirkyard. You can see it from the gates. Cherished by the community for over 150 years since its construction in 1870, when it replaced the old and much smaller St Ethernan’s kirk Grieg’s forbears knew, it’s the village of Rathen’s biggest, most iconic building and visible for miles around.

Yet, in July this year, came, as Alex reflects, a ‘very sad day’ – the church’s closure. Younger folk are no longer interested in religion and the Church of Scotland’s congregations are dwindling. Society is changing, and its needs are changing too, so, like many other kirks across Scotland, Rathen’s immaculately-kept kirk will be put up for sale.

Rathen West Parish Kirk, Aberdeenshire, closed after 150 years service to its local community in July 2024. But what now is the future for this stunning, elegant and well cared for granite building?

Tragic loss or new beginning?

Unless action is taken, the building, as a public space, will be lost to the community altogether.

Yet it was to attend services in the old kirk at Rathen that Grieg’s great-grandfather, Alexander, regularly returned from Norway. So the building provides an important focus. The Grieg Society of Scotland would like to see it made into a music and heritage venue – a home for Grieg! – but that will take resources and a separate, dedicated organisation to make it happen.

The restoration of Rathen’s old kirkyard gates was achieved by a single volunteer. But saving the newly-closed kirk building for the community will take coordinated effort on a much larger-scale.

Will we be looking at a tragic loss, or a new beginning?

Author: Dr Sally LK Garden (Honorary Director) (Sep 2024)

Posted on

Grieg visits Dundee in spirit and song

A morning concert in Dundee’s Wighton Heritage Centre caught the ear of Grieg Society of Scotland committee member, Eva Tyson, who went along to discover her historical compatriot, composer Edvard Grieg, there, in spirit and song!

Sisters, Sally Garden & Alison Hart bring Grieg in spirit and song to the Wighton Heritage Centre, Dundee, July 2024. (images: Friends of Wighton, Eva Tyson, Tony Freeth)

I was lucky enough to be present at a morning concert held in the Wighton Heritage Centre in Dundee on Saturday 20th July 2024. Sally, our esteemed Honorary Director, gave a recital entitled Songs & Springs from Scotland and Scandinavia ably accompanied on the piano by her sister Alison Hart.

Norwegian and Scottish composers

Sally had chosen an inspiring selection of songs by Norwegian and Scottish composers showing not only the grace, but also the sheer artistry of both the music and the lyrics.

The opening song by Robert Burns Afton Water, set to music by the Norwegian composer Agathe Backer-Grøndahl, was beautifully rendered by Sally. The song På Norges nøgne fjelde (On Norway’s bare mountains) with music by Grieg, was particularly expressive, conveying the feeling of a lonely pine tree, high up in the Norwegian mountains in winter, longing for warmer climes.

Gran i snø (Spruce tree in snow), the subject of one of Grieg’s most evocative songs, here depicted by Norwegian illustrator Erik Werenskiold, 1910. (image: Kunstmuseene i Bergen)
Also by Erik Werenskiold, a masterful portrait of Edvard Grieg, capturing the composer’s spirit and love of the natural world. (image: Bergen Offentlige Bibliothek)

Fiddle fun

Sally showed that she is not only a noted mezzo-soprano, but a gifted fiddle player. She had chosen to play a Norwegian folkdance called a springar and also a special bruremarsj. We could detect the similarity with a Scottish reel and it certainly set the audience’s feet tapping.

North Sea songs and threads

The kindred nature of Scottish and Norwegian songs with their narrative story telling traditions, is close to Sally’s heart. Through her imaginative choice of programme, beautifully supported by Alison, and with a little chat and story for the attentive audience, she wove for us a rich musical tapestry that binds the two countries together.

(More about the Wighton Heritage Centre, Dundee here, and the performers here.)

Author: Eva Tyson (Committee Member, Grieg Society of Scotland) (Aug 2024)

Posted on

Grieg’s Piano Concerto: Norwegian pianist Oda Voltersvik and Aberdeen City Orchestra in fresh North Sea exchange

Grieg Society of Scotland founder, Dr Sally Garden, returned to the city of Aberdeen – her fond musical ‘home’ – to catch up with the latest, exciting North Sea musical exchange: a concert with young Norwegian pianist Oda Voltersvik and Aberdeen City Orchestra. With a fresh perspective, and familiarity with historical context, it seemed like a hint of something new and promising for Scotland’s classical music scene.

Conductor Tomas Leakey, pianist Oda Voltersvik and violinist and chair of Aberdeen City Orchestra, Aden Mazur, captured post-concert in Aberdeen’s Music Hall. (image: Dr Sally Garden)

In May, this year, I returned to Aberdeen’s gracious Music Hall to hear an orchestra that had engaged me as soloist not long after its founding 40 years ago in the 1980s. Sitting in the audience was, for me, a change of perspective in more ways than one.

Aberdeen City Orchestra, formerly Aberdeen Chamber Orchestra (the city’s second such ensemble since the 1930s), had engaged young Norwegian pianist Oda Voltersvik for a performance of Grieg’s Piano Concerto. Having welcomed Norwegian pianist Rune Alver for our Grieg Society of Scotland concert in the city only last year, it was good to hear the fruits of another North Sea musical exchange on what felt like a following wind.

It was also good to be reminded of the professional attitude of Aberdeen’s amateur orchestras, of which the city boasts several. The ACO, ably conducted by Tomas Leakey, presented a programme of Wagner, Beethoven and Grieg, with the evening’s soloist cleverly engaged (after a trip to Norway), by violinist and orchestra chair, Aden Mazur. It was a refreshingly grassroots occasion – the kind Aberdeen is good at – with local hospitality for the soloist and friendly musical networks to the fore.

Ambition, continuity and the beginnings of something new?

Couple that with a nimble reading of Beethoven’s Die Weihe des Hauses overture and the orchestra’s clear sense of ambition – seeking ever more challenging and expansive repertoire, and finding the means to engage an overseas soloist – could this be the beginnings of something new? A hint of future promise? After all, across the water, it was out of the amateur society ‘Harmonien’, directed for a time by Edvard Grieg, that today’s Bergen Philharmonic grew, and – with the exception of the excellent Aberdeen Sinfonietta – not since the days of the Aberdeen Philharmonic Society in the nineteenth century, have we seen all the components needed for such a large-scale, independent initiative come together in North East Scotland’s capital.

Aberdeen City Orchestra before their performance at the city’s Music Hall. (image: Grieg Society of Scotland)

Nor is this an idle comparison. We have been here before.

For it was as leader of the Aberdeen Philharmonic Society orchestra, in the 1880s, that Grieg’s young friend the Norwegian violinist and composer Johan Halvorsen came to Aberdeen to earn a living and spur the city’s musical life. Grieg joked that Halvorsen should find himself a ‘Frøken Greig’ – a ‘Miss Greig’ – one of his ‘ancestors’ to marry, as Aberdeen had so many! Halvorsen did indeed marry a such a one, not a Scottish Miss ‘Greig’ but a Norwegian Miss ‘Grieg’, the composer’s niece! But that’s another story!

What matters is the sense of ambition and continuing cultural connection across the North Sea.

Norwegian violinist and composer Johan Halvorsen came to Scotland to lead the Aberdeen Philharmonic Society orchestra. Whilst in the city he taught violin and thoroughly enjoyed its social gatherings and dinners! (Image: Oslo Museum)
A Grieg birthday gathering at Lofthus, Hardangerfjord. Halvorsen (top right) and his wife Annie (bottom left) join their hosts Edvard and Nina Grieg (rows between). (Image: Bergen Offentlige Bibliotek)

Nature and music in one breath

Like violinist Halvorsen, who came with ‘very high credentials’ to Aberdeen, soloist for the evening, pianist Oda Voltersvik brought, and shared with us, the fruits of her developing international career. Voltersvik is currently artist-in-residence with the Edvard Grieg Society of the Dakotas, one of our sister societies in the global Grieg ‘family’, and shortly, will appear as ‘Pianist of the Week’ at the Edvard Grieg Museum Troldhaugen, Bergen.

And the Piano Concerto, brought fresh from Grieg’s Norway?

From the first bright flourish of the piano to the warmth of the final tutti, this was a performance of polish, and Voltersvik’s cadenza, strongly delineated with alternating flashes of sunlight and rumbling thunder – worthy of Norway’s Hardangerfjord or Scotland’s Glencoe – was thrilling. That she possesses such command of changing musical weather (and Norwegian dance rhythms!) is perhaps no surprise, as Lofthus – for a time Grieg’s Hardanger creative retreat – is local terrain for Voltersvik. It was nature and music in one breath.

Image of Hardangerfjord
Grieg’s Hardangerfjord, near Lofthus. (image: Dr Sally Garden)

Grassroots cultural exchange

And talking of nature and music, a final thought.

Like Edvard Grieg, who negotiated his own concert appearances, pianist Oda Voltersvik manages her own diary, taking time to meet and chat and develop opportunities. This she does with a genuine, self-effacing naturalness and generosity of spirit that contributes in no small way to that feeling of grassroots cultural exchange – exactly the kind of exchange Grieg valued: one without intermediary between artist and host. Returning from a concert trip to Stockholm, where he had received many kind invitations to the homes and gatherings of locals, Grieg remarked that ‘never in my life have I made so many visits’, adding that it had been the best arrangement for his art, and that out of it he had made many new friends.

Music-making which arises out of the community, naturally, as with Grieg in Stockholm, or Leipzig, or any of the other European towns and cities he toured, or as here with ACO and their Norwegian guest, and which grows from the tap root of older historical connections, bringing depth, nuance and continuity, is invaluable.

Guided by local hosts, Norwegian pianist Oda Voltersvik takes time out after her Aberdeen concert to visit the Edvard Grieg ancestral gravestone at Rathen, Aberdeenshire. (Image: by kind permission Rebecca Docea)

This is real culture, locally sourced, locally maintained, yet cosmopolitan in outlook. It is precisely the kind of independent development Scotland’s musical scene needs, and one which engages the different artistic and community perspectives and connections, historical and contemporary, that the Grieg Society of Scotland champions and believes critical to the flourishing of Scotland’s classical music culture and identity.

Leaving behind my performer and promoter hats, listening to Voltersvik and the ACO making music together, with such honesty and joy, was the most stimulating and productive change of perspective I could possibly have wished for!

Oda Voltersvik will next appear in Scotland in October 2025 as guest of the Oban Music Society. More about the ACO and how to support the work of the orchestra here. This article is also published at Music Aberdeen.

Author: Dr Sally LK Garden (Jun 2024)