Of Europe’s 750 million people, Norway claims only 5. Norway is the sticks, the boondocks, the land of country bumpkins.

Joking aside, it is relatively small and remote. It was even more so a century ago, before cars and the internet made the earth a lot smaller. So when Norwegian hero Edvard Grieg wrote magnificent music, he put this small country on the maps and in the minds of the rest of the continent. His compositions are flavored with Norwegian legends and mythology – this is the land of giants, trolls, gnomes, swords, spears, and Vikings. One of my favorite Halloweentide pieces is his March of the Trolls, which comes from a series of short character pieces he wrote for piano.

This piece is in trio form – ABA. There’s an opening section in which you can hear the excited little trolls running around, followed by a middle section where the trolls sit around and relax a spell; the piece ends with an exact repeat of the first section.