Peer Gynt-minifestival

In 2026, it will be 150 years since the world premiere of Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt with Edvard Grieg’s iconic incidental music.
The Peer Gynt Mini Festival is a continuous artistic journey – from Grieg’s music, via Ibsen’s text, to Arne Nordheim’s modern reflection. The audience is invited to experience how the same work can cast entirely different shadows, depending on perspective, expression, and time.
The result is a day that not only celebrates Peer Gynt as cultural heritage, but also explores the work as living art: open, multifaceted, and constantly in motion.

12:00
Edvard Grieg: Peer Gynt – lecture recital
Christian Grøvlen

The day opens with a lecture recital in which Christian Grøvlen takes the audience into Grieg’s Peer Gynt music – how it came into being, how it functions dramatically, and how it is often misunderstood. Grieg’s music for Ibsen’s drama is among the most famous in the world and among the most frequently performed works in Norwegian music history, but precisely for that reason it also risks being reduced to atmospheric images detached from their original context.
Through the piano, historical context, and close musical reading, Grøvlen shows how the Peer Gynt music contains far more than the idyllic and the folkloric: here we find irony, darkness, restlessness, and existential unease. The audience gains new listening perspectives on well-known movements, as well as insight into how Grieg worked dramatically, psychologically, and formally with the material. The lecture recital functions both as an independent experience and as a foundation for the rest of the festival day.

14:00
Peer Gynt – monologue
Kåre Conradi, artistic director of Det Norske Ibsenkompaniet

At the centre of the day is Kåre Conradi’s critically acclaimed solo performance based on Henrik Ibsen’s text. Here, Peer Gynt emerges not as a fairy-tale figure or national myth, but as a human being: self-deceptive, vulnerable, contradictory, and deeply recognisable.
Conradi brings Peer to life alone on stage, allowing the audience to come close to the psychological and existential core of the work. This is Peer Gynt stripped of ornamentation, yet sharpened in its human complexity – where humour and seriousness, bravado and emptiness exist side by side. The performance gives the text an immediate presence and opens space for reflection on who Peer really is, and what he represents today.

16:00
Arne Nordheim: Peer Gynt – concert conversation
Benedicte Maurseth, Kode’s composer-in-residence 2026
Ola Nordal, historian and music critic with a PhD on Arne Nordheim’s music
Johannes Holtmon, music curator at Kode

The festival concludes with a concert conversation that places Peer Gynt within a modern sonic and intellectual landscape. Arne Nordheim’s music for Peer Gynt forms the starting point for a discussion of tradition, modernity, and interpretation – and of how a national cultural icon can and must be re-read in different times.

Through conversation and music, Johannes Holtmon, Ola Nordal, and composer-in-residence Benedicte Maurseth reflect on Nordheim’s radical perspective on the Peer Gynt material, and on the tension between heritage and renewal. What role has folk music played in representations of Peer Gynt? What happens when Grieg’s romantic tonal language meets post-war modernism? How does our understanding of Peer change when the sound world shifts? And what does this say about our own time and our need for new forms of expression?

Venue: Troldsalen, Troldhaugen
Date and time: 12 April 2026, 12:00–17:00
Price: 400/300/100

Photo: Hans Fredrik Asbjørnsen