Prairie Performances: Something Wicked This Way Comes
Dance of the Macabre on 18th Century Oil Painting
By Mel Miller
On this special Halloween episode of Prairie Performances, “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” we set the scene for Halloween with an evening of chilling works to prepare you for the spooky season.
Starting off with a couple of Halloween classics, we will hear Camille Saint-Saëns Dance Macabre op. 40, Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, and excerpts from Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. After that, we venture into the realm of film and cinematic inspiration with “Double Double Toil and Trouble” by John Williams, “Neptune, The Mystic” from The Planets, Suite for Large Orchestra Op. 32 by Gustav Holst, and music from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, composed by Bernard Herrmann. We conclude the episode with St John’s Night on the Bare Mountain by Modest Mussorgsky as performed by the East Illinois Youth Orchestra.
Listeners beware, you’re in for a classical scare. Thursday October 30 at 7pm CST. Stream here until November 13th.
