I haven't listened to Totentanz for ages. I see what you mean about Stravinsky, but I could say the same about Mussorgsky. To me this is also reminiscent of his A Night On The Bare Mountain.
This reminds me of the day I learned that one really should not go watch a movie on opening day.
Years ago, probably late 1980s or thereabouts, they replayed Disney's
Fantasia in movie theaters here. Now at that time I had never actually seen it, and because it is so highly acclaimed I decided to go fill the gap in my cultural education. On the day the film opened.
The theater was packed to the rafters. With old ladies who brought their grandchildren to come see this classic of, er, children's movies. As it goes under these conditions, the kids were rather noisy before the film started, but of course, they would soon settle down once the film started, right? Well, they did, for about five minutes. Then Disney's abstract visual interpretation of Bach bored them, and they started getting restless.
It went downhill from there: within fifteen minutes, the kids were all bored to tears, started talking, then walking around, then running up and down the aisles.. There were about ten thousand of them packed into the theater, all treating it like a playground. I could hardly hear the music above the din.
Then, finally, the Mussorgsky piece. Now THAT quieted them right down, for about thirty seconds. Blessed relief.
Then the terrified screaming began, and old ladies shuffled out with tearful kids in tow.
And that was my experience of probably the only really good film Disney ever made, but it was my own fault. Since then, no matter how eager I was to see a new film, I always waited a week or two for the crowds to thin out a bit. Not that I have been in a film theatre in many years now anyway.
