From the wonderful whirlpool rabbit hole of YouTube is a seasonal treasure featuring everyone’s favorite piano showman and some dancing skeletons! This is Liberace’s own interpretation of the Danse Macabre (first performed in 1875). It is the name of opus 40 by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns. The composition is based on a poem by Henri Cazalis, Danse Macabre, here’s just a little of a translation of this poem by Peter Low:
Zigger-zigger-zig tapping on a coffin
Death has got a beat and a toothy grin.
At the stroke of twelve plays a crazy polka
zigger-zigger-zag on his violin.The night is dark, the winter winds blow
the tree branches creak in the stormy clouds
and off the whitened skeletons go
they skip and they leap in their flowing shrouds.Zigger-zigger-zig how they frisk and toss
dancing to the beat rattling every bone.
Now a lustful pair sit on the moss
hoping to repeat pleasures they had known.