PSO Field Trips: Beyond the Grave

Description

Ghostly Chamber Music with tales from Portsmouth's past performed by harp, flute and string quartet Speaker Roxie Zwicker, author of "Haunted Portsmouth, NH" will be leading us through a concert filled with ghostly images. Erica Driscoll, harp Aubrie Dionne, flute Jesse MacDonald and Hannah Reitz, violin Autumn Riley, viola Mask of the Red Death was composed as a programmatic piece depicting Poe's short story of the same name. Adapted for string quartet and harp by composer Andre Caplet in 1922, this tone poem tells a grisly story of a time when a plague had arisen which became known as the Red Death. An attempt by a prince and his friends to avoid it by locking themselves into his castle had disastrous consequences. The music is so evocative that the story can easily be discerned. The climax comes when the piano (harp) sounds the 12 strokes of midnight as the Red Death knocks on the door. Afternoon of a Faun is Debussy's depiction of a pagan celebration resulting in a faun (half man, half goat) falling asleep in the heat of a lazy afternoon. Death and the Maiden was composed when Schubert was trying to recuperate from a very serious illness, and realized he was dying. Its setting is a poem by Matthias Claudius of a maiden pleading for her life from a wily and ghastly death figure, only to find that he gallops away with her in the end. Sure to put a chill into you, despite the heat of a summer afternoon!