At Castleton Festival, a fitting tribute to Lorin Maazel

At the end of the prologue to Charles Gounod's "Roméo et Juliette," the strings play an excruciatingly ardent motif that is heard twice, once rising through an interval of a major sixth and then again ascending to a peak a half-step lower. This tiny difference inflects a mood of hope and desire to a darker, minor tonality, presaging the doom of the star-crossed lovers.