Grieg, Munch. Bach, a Bull and a Penguin

 On Sunday, July 30th, we had a nice breakfast at our hotel, then walked to St. Paul's Church for 9:00 mass, in Norwegian.  We couldn't understand a word, but the mass is the mass, and it seemed to be a pretty standard Catholic parish.

Afterwards we walked from the hotel to the art museum complex, KODE.  On the way, we passed a statue of Ole Bull, the 19th-century Norwegian violinist superstar.  Hotels would bottle and sell his bathwater.  This is not the first statue of Ole Bull that we have seen: there is another in Loring Park in Minneapolis, which is the site of Norwegian Independence Day ("Sittende Mai") celebrations.

Bergen:

Minneapolis:

The walk to KODE is pleasant, through parks.

Online, I had bought tickets for KODE's lunchtime concert tour to Troldhaugen, the home of Norway's favorite composer Edvard Grieg.  We got on the bus at 11:00 and rode out into the country south of Bergen for about twenty minutes.  It was about a ten-minute walk from the parking lot to the house, where we took a short English-language tour.

The guide told us that the high ceilings of the house made it difficult to heat during winter, but the Griegs only lived there during the summer, and went on tour the rest of the year,  We wandered the grounds, going down by the lake to the little red hut where Grieg worked.

We went to the lakeside hillside where Grieg and his wife Nina are buried.

Then we had a surprisingly good lunch at the cafeteria and went down to the concert hall for the half-hour 1 p.m. concert, played by a Norwegian pianist who, according to Google, is a tango specialist.  I was hoping to hear a Grieg tango, but he apparently didn't write any, so we had to settle for a couple of standards ("The Hall of the Mountain King" and "Wedding at Troldhaugen") surrounding some less familiar pieces.  It was nice, well-played.

We wandered around the grounds a little more, then headed back to the bus, which left at 2:00 for KODE.

Included in the price of the tickets was free entrance to the KODE art museums.  When we got there. we learned that there would be a guided tour of 19th-century paintings, including a number by Edvard Munch, in English at 3 p.m.  We went across the street and walked in the park until 3, when we joined the tour..

We went through the modern art museum on our own.  I'll have to say that nothing there struck a chord with me.

Finally, I was able to take my afternoon nap, while Mary Joy visited the Brygge Museum.

At 5:30, we had  a very good dinner at Pingvinen ("the Penguin") a short walk from our hotel.

We ate early so that we could attend a 7:00 organ concert, part of the Bergen International Organ Festival, with Serbian organist (resident in Norway) Milkica Radovanovic at the Cathedral.  She played pieces by Bach, Reger, Liszt and Duruflé.