Anitra’s Dance

The Anacrouse collection offers pianists, beginners and advanced alike, a wide choice of classical works from the Renaissance to the present day. It brings together major works of the repertoire as well as rarer pieces, and also offers transcriptions for piano solo or four hands, selected for their musical and educational interest. Each score, available individually, benefits from careful editorial work: a rigorously established musical text, clear and legible engraving, accompanied by a short biography of the composer and a note on the work.

“Anitra’s Dance” (in A minor) is a captivating stylistic exercise that demands great precision of articulation from the pianist. The technical challenge lies in the staccato playing and lightness of touch needed to imitate the string pizzicatos of the original orchestral version. The work focuses on the independence of the hands and the mastery of dynamic contrasts, in order to convey the at once mysterious and elegant character of this dance. It is an ideal piece for refining wrist responsiveness and rhythmic clarity.

Composed in 1875 to illustrate Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt, this piece accompanies the seductive dance of a Bedouin chief’s daughter in the Moroccan desert. Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) deploys all his melodic genius, blending Scandinavian harmonies with rhythms of Oriental flavour. Although Anitra is a fictional character, through this stylised “mazurka” Grieg succeeds in creating an exotic, refined atmosphere that contributed greatly to the worldwide fame of his orchestral suite, before becoming a staple of the piano repertoire.