I spent yesterday evening in Bristol at the fabulous St.Georges where I was magnificently entertained by the Aurora Orchestra and Peter Straub. Like most of the audience, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, but I very much enjoyed what I got. It went something like this.

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For their Hallowe’en tour, the orchestra is playing a set that includes many somewhat spooky pieces of music. They open with an arrangement of the popular carol, “Adeste Fideles” (“O Come Al Ye Faithful) by Charles Ives which slows the tune to a funereal pace. It is decidedly unheimlich, and sets the scene perfectly.

Also in the first half is “Octandre” by Edgard Varèse which people other than me (much to my relief) have compared to Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring”. I discover that the theme from The Thomas Crown Affair, “Windmills of your Mind”, was originally a French song called “Les Moulins de mon Coeur”. I think I prefer the original. The first half closes with a very familiar piece: “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” by Paul Dukas, made famous by Mickey Mouse in Fantasia.

An American writer called Peter is visiting London. His past is about to catch up with him.

The second half opens with a performance by pianola genius, Rex Lawson. If you think that a pianola is just something on which crappy music is churned out in the salon bars of Westerns, you need to hear this guy play. (YouTube is our friend. Here he is, playing the scherzo from Mendelssohn’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream”.)

“Sweetheart, you’re not carrying a drink. No matter how they feel, his women are always carrying drinks.”

“No, I’m carrying a gun. Haven’t you noticed? He wants me dead, but I’m not going to spend eternity in the Mississippi just for his sake.”

She wasn’t. Health & safety rules required a last minute change to the script. Apparently even a toy gun was deemed unsafe, but a knife was perfectly OK. Sopranos carrying knives can still be dangerous, even if they are only singers, not New York gangsters.

She is, however, heavily pregnant. This is fortuitous circumstance, but somehow it is entirely more appropriate that a dead woman who has just walked out of the Mississippi river should be so.

“But I’m not…” Peter says. “I didn’t come here to be…”

Aldo smacks his knee. “You wound her up, you know, you can’t blame her for wanting to get rid of you.”

Other music for the second half included “Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel”, a song by Schubert in which the titular woman has far less luck than Penelope in waiting for her lover to return; and Valse Triste, a Waltz written by Sibelius as part of the music for a play written by his brother-in-law, Arvid Järnefelt. The play was called “Kuolema”, which is Finnish for “Death”. The dancers, aside from the heroine, are all ghosts. When she joins the dance, there is a knock on the door.

“I’m going to kill him, that selfish stupid blind heartless…”

Peter takes the stage for this final piece. He and the soprano, dance. She stabs him.

Peter is dead.

The end.

Happy Hallowe’en.