When the sun sets this evening, we will be in the grip of Walpurgisnacht!

Walpurgis Night, the eve of the feast day of Saint Walpurga, is a time when evil spirits are believed to roam the earth. Tradition holds that this is the night of a witches’ sabbath and orgy of the damned, held high atop the Brocken, the tallest peak of the Harz Mountains in central Germany. It’s the last blast of diablerie before May Day. In Goethe’s “Faust,” Mephistopheles guides his imperiled charge into a swirling cauldron of witches and demons so as to complete his moral degradation.

This Tuesday afternoon on The Classical Network, we’ll anticipate the worst (or the best?), with Franz Liszt’s “A Faust Symphony.” That will be followed by another work inspired by Goethe, Felix Mendelssohn’s “Die erste Walpurgisnacht” (“The First Walpurgis Night”), in which prankish Druids get the best of their superstitious occupiers. It ain’t exactly “Faust,” but it will do.

First, on today’s Noontime Concert, a ray of light, as we listen to Marianna Prjevalskaya – Concert Pianist, in recital from Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center,129 West 67th Street, in New York City. Merkin’s Tuesday Matinees present a new generation of critically acclaimed, extraordinary young performers in a concert hall known for its near-perfect acoustics.

On Prjevalskaya’s program will be the Piano Sonata in A major, Op. 2, No. 2, by Beethoven; two Rhapsodies, Op. 79, by Johannes Brahms; and six selections from the two books of Preludes, by Claude Debussy.

Then the Brocken, she’ll be rockin’. Join me, if you dare, from 12 to 4 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.