The dramatist and poet Henrik Ibsen wrote his epic poem “Peer Gynt” in 1876. It was, however, not initially conceived for the stage. Several years later Ibsen began to adapt it to theater use and already at the outset of these steps he contacted Edvard Grieg (15 June 1843 – 4 September1907) who then was already a celebrity as a composer. Out of this close cooperation grew the stage music which Grieg had written for the first production. Later he revised and re-orchestrated eight selections of his incidental music and arranged them into two concert suites. The movements of these suites are widely known and famous: Åse’s Death, Anitra’s Dance, In the Hall of the Mountain King, The Abduction, Peer Gynt’s Home-Coming, Solvejg’s Song and finally “Morning Mood”. In its band version too, this opening movement of the first suite creates an impressive mood painting of a cool, sunlit Scandinavian morning.
The arrangement by Vladimír Studnická who is well versed in that field stayed true to the original score in order to reproduce the intentions of the composer as much as possible.