The South Birmingham Sinfonia will perform this work in their Summer 2019 concert on 13th July 2019.
Camille Saint-Saëns wrote his short tone poem for orchestra, the Danse macabre, in 1874 based on a French text by poet Henri Cazalis. The orchestral work is an extended version of a song for voice and piano and features a solo violin in place of the voice.
In the legend, "Death" appears at midnight every year on Halloween. Death calls forth the dead from their graves to dance for him while he plays his fiddle (here represented by a solo violin). His skeletons dance for him until the rooster crows at dawn, when they must return to their graves until the next year.
©RWK for SBS, February/March 2019
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danse_macabre_(Saint-Saëns)