Saturday, 31 October 2026

Sibelius, the Finnish nationalist composer behind Finlandia, had Swedish as his first language and learned Finnish as a teenager, though his music was revered by Finnish nationalists around 1900.

For Halloween, the host recounted Saint-Saëns's Danse Macabre, in which Death plays the violin at midnight, the dead dance until a crowing cock forces them back to their graves.

South African-born Trevor Jones, who left for England in the mid-1960s to study music, built a film career with scores for Excalibur, The Dark Crystal, Mississippi Burning and The Last of the Mohicans.

The host noted Mozart wrote three symphonies, numbers 39, 40 and 41 (the Jupiter), within about ten weeks, and played the first movement of the Great G minor Symphony.

The host said he had met soprano Pumeza Matshikiza earlier that week after her Johannesburg performance, calling her warm and gracious, and then played her recording of O mio babbino caro.