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A Special Evening of Food and Music in Little Washington
Jul 13, 2010The Castleton Festival has planned a special evening in partnership with the world-renowned Inn at Little Washington. Rappahannock County’s two internationally celebrated figures, Chef Patrick O’Connell and Maestro Lorin Maazel, are co-hosting an evening of extraordinary music, food and wine, on Monday, July 19. The festivities will begin at 7pm, just steps from the Inn, at the intimate Theatre at Washington, VA, with a program of Johannes Brahms’ song-cycle Die schöne Magelone. The charming story linking the songs will be narrated in English by the award-winning actress Dietlinde Turban-Maazel. Two of the Festival’s standout artists, tenor Dominic Armstrong and pianist Wilson Southerland, complete the musical forces.
After the hour-long recital, a special four-course dinner with hand-picked wine pairings will be offered at the Inn. We hope you will join the Chef and the Maestro for this one-of-a-kind evening. All inclusive tickets for concert and dinner (meal, wines, service and taxes) are $400. There under 25 places remaining, and tickets can be ordered by calling the Castleton Festival box office (540-937-4969 or 866-974-0767).
More about the Program:
Johannes Brahms' (1833-1897) Die schöne Magelone is a romance story drawn from German writer and critic, Ludwig Tieck's (1773-1853) 1796 novella, "The Wondrous Love-Story of the Fair Magelone and Count Peter of Provence." Tieck based his novella on medieval tales, lyrical stories of chivalry and love which have been told since the Middle Ages, and included poems throughout his narrative story.
Pianist Steven Blier has written that Brahms became interested in Tieck's novella in his early adolescence when he received an invitation to enjoy a vacation at the country home of Adolf Giesemann. Brahms served as a music teacher and companion to Giesemann's daughter Lieschen, and Blier tells that Brahms and Lieschen read together, including a volume by Marbach which was an earlier version of Magelone and the Knight Peter of Provence.
Steven Coburn has commented on the fact that Brahms never wrote an opera, which makes this work which includes narrative song especially interesting. The poems that Brahms adapted from the Tieck novella are, in essence, the equivalent of operatic arias. Brahms selected fifteen of the eighteen poems which occur throughout Tieck's novella and these poems, Coburn remarks, "draw upon a common thread in Brahms' choice of literature, being romantic in tone yet medieval in their evocation of chivalric love."
Rarely heard performed, Die schöne Magelone has at its heart love songs which greatly inspired Brahms in this emotional vocal compostion.
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