Four Norwegian Moods

These four brief impressions are inspired by a collection of folk songs, which Igor Stravinsky’s second wife Vera Soudeikina de Bosset discovered in an antiquarian bookshop in Los Angeles. The composer retained the melodies almost unaltered, but reworked the accompaniments (originally by Edvard Grieg) according to his personal style, with particular regard to rhythm and meter. Shortly after the work’s premiere, Four Norwegian Moods was used in a Hollywood film on the Norwegian resistance to occupation by Hitler’s Germany.