When we move twelve years ahead in time - to 1875 - he is at a peak in his artistic career. However, in his private life, he is in one of his life's deepest declines. He had recently lost his parents, and his relationship to Nina had only become worse during these years. In addition he doubted his own creativity and ability as composer, in particular when it came to works of larger format. At this point he composes, "Ballad in G minor", Op 24. He wrote the ballad in Bergen, during the winter 1875/76, while putting the finishing touches on Op 23, the stage music for Peer Gynt. If he had hitherto been fighting with and against the capital city's music public, music colleagues, and critics at home and abroad, now it was his own life he would fight with and for.

This ballad is Grieg's most ambitious solo work for the piano. It is built up as a variation work with fourteen variations. The theme is the folk melody, "The Peasant Class of the Northland" from a poem of Kristine Aas, (printed in Finmarkens Amtstidende, Vardoe, 17 March, 1832). The melody was written down in July 1848, by L M Lindeman, based on Anders Nilsen Perlesteinsbakken, Modalenin Valdres, and published in Lindeman's folk tune collection, "Older and Newer Norwegian Mountain Melodies".The main key in all variations is G minor, and Grieg basically follows the harmonic pattern which is set in the presentation of the themes as well. However, the different variations span a wide scope of feelings, from the storming extrovert to the reflected introvert. The pianistic challenge in the ballad is partly in the architectonic build up of the work and the recreating of the widely different atmospheres is represented by separate variations. In addition, there is of course, the great technical demands that are made on the performer. The theme in itself, which is almost common in its melancholy, becomes, through Grieg's harmonizing with the chromatic falling bassline, the prologue to a spiritual drama which is heightened and unfolds through the following variations, before the work at last ends up with the theme, unresolved, and now in an ever darker, gloomier form.