Edvard Grieg great admirer of Grieg's music and a strong empathy was quickly established. In a 1907 interview, Grieg stated: “I have written Norwegian Peasant Dances that no one in my country can play, and here comes this Australian who plays them as they ought to be played! He is a genius that we Scandinavians cannot do other than love.” Edvard Grieg died at the Municipal Hospital in Bergen, Norway in the late summer of 1907 at age 64 from heart failure. He had suffered a long period of illness. His last words were "Well, if it must be so." The funeral
Haugtussa (Grieg) the piano. From verse to verse, Grieg gradually changes this passage using different harmonizations. The first to perform the complete cycle of songs in Cristiania was Eva Nansen, wife of the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen, with Grieg's colleague and friend Agathe Backer-Grøndahl at the piano, on 2 November 1899. Grieg was not present at the recital, for he had a concert in Stockholm at the same time. Four of the "Haugtussa" songs were also performed on 22 October 1898 by the Norwegian-born Swedish singer Dagmar Möller, to whom the cycle was dedicated. Haugtussa (Grieg) Haugtussa, Op. 67, or "The Mountain