Mothsgaard/Søllerød Kro

These buildings now stand in the northern part of Copenhagen, next to the Church on Søllerød. Edvard Grieg stayed here with his friends in the summer of 1868 and wrote his Piano Concerto in A minor here.

Grieg and his wife, Nina, left Norway for the summer holidays that year with their daughter, Alexandra, born in April. In search of the peace and quiet needed for composing, Grieg left his wife and child with his in-laws in Copenhagen, taking himself off to Mothsgaard Court in Søllerød, a few kilometres to the north of the city centre. He was accompanied by his friends: the already renowned Norwegian pianist and composer Edmund Neupert, the Danish composer J. O. Emil Horneman and the writer and music teacher Benjamin Feddersen. Feddersen rented a small furnished summer house with an upright piano, where Grieg could work undisturbed. The friends lived nearby, and they would meet every evening at their Søllerød Kro tavern ‘headquarters’, where they would discuss Grieg’s projected concerto. Here, over just a few months, Grieg wrote the whole piano part, whilst the orchestral parts were added during the winter in Christiania.