Grieg's music in popular culture

The music of the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg has been used extensively in media, music education, and popular music.

For the 150th anniversary of his birth, Norway organized a huge celebration, "Grieg in the Schools", which included programs for children from pre-school to secondary school in 1993. The programs were repeated in 1996 in Germany, and called "Grieg in der Schule", in which over a thousand students participated. There were Grieg observances in 39 countries, from Mexico to Moscow.

Further celebrations of Grieg and his music were held in 2007, the 100th anniversary of his death. Bosnia and Herzegovina held a large-scale celebration, featuring Peer Gynt and the Piano Concerto a public concert for children and adults. The July 2007 Australasian Piano Pedagogy Conference featured Grieg's works.

The Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery in Nebraska presented a chamber music concert that featured one of Grieg's string quartets. Annual conferences are held for continuing education of music teachers and music therapists in the United States.

The New York Times reviewed one of many concerts for young people with Grieg's music, made popular for today's audiences. The reviewer noted, "Kurt Masur has put youth high on his agenda at the New York Philharmonic, and he was conspicuously present at the orchestra's first Young People's Concert at Avery Fisher Hall on Saturday afternoon.... Children and parents came in fair numbers." However, "the enormous grip of popular culture under which such elements are subsumed and it looks like Mr. Masur and the Philharmonic will have the fight of their lives." Masur the teacher-conductor "wisely called for the Grieg themes about to be heard. His delivery was warm, not without humor and occasionally muddled by struggles with the language." He even "stopped in mid-performance to admire Irene Breslaw's viola solo [in Peer Gynt] and to point out its connection to the American hoedown tradition." In conclusion, The Times asserted that "the melodies, already identified by instrument, emerged from the larger mass and did their work. There is a directness in Grieg's music that travels well across cultural divides."

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