Edvard Grieg was born in 1843 in Bergen, Norway and died there in 1907.

Grieg was an accomplished pianist as well as a composer and his Piano Concerto in A minor, written in 1868, is one of the most frequently performed piano concertos of all time. In 1870, Grieg travelled to Rome to meet up with the legendary pianist and composer, Franz Liszt. When Grieg showed Liszt the manuscript of the Piano Concerto in A minor, Liszt sight-read the concerto on the spot!

Grieg’s career as a composer was well established when Norwegian playwright and theatre director Henrik Ibsen invited him to write incidental music for his play Peer Gynt. After the premiere of the play took place in 1876, Grieg created two orchestral suites for concert performance from the incidental music.

Morning Mood is the first of four movements that make up Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 and was written to depict the sun rising in the Moroccan desert.