EILEEN ANDJELKOVITCH (Violin)
GREGORI TCHERNIAK (Balalaika)
THE Danse Macabre , produced in 1874, has a a programme which is roughly as follows.
The scene is a graveyard at midnight. We hear the clock strike. Death himself appears and after knocking on the graves, proceeds to tune up a fiddle. A solo violin with a mistuned top string presents that. Then skeletons come out from the graves and, while a bitter wind blows, they join, with rattling bones, in a wild leaping running dance. Just as the revelry reaches its most boisterous moment, the cock crows and Death's fiddle is heard in a last strain as he disappears along with the skeletons.