Track Listing

1. Peter and the Wolf, children's tale for narrator & orchestra, Op. 67: Musical march: "Each character in this tale..."
2. Peter and the Wolf, children's tale for narrator & orchestra, Op. 67: "Early one morning, Peter opened the gate". Andantino
3. Peter and the Wolf, children's tale for narrator & orchestra, Op. 67: "On the branch of a big tree". Allegro - Andantino, come prima
4. Peter and the Wolf, children's tale for narrator & orchestra, Op. 67: "Just then a duck came waddling around". L'istesso tempo - Piu
5. Peter and the Wolf, children's tale for narrator & orchestra, Op. 67: "Suddenly something caught Peter's attention". Moderato - Alleg
6. Peter and the Wolf, children's tale for narrator & orchestra, Op. 67: "Grandfather came out". Poco più andante - Andantino, come pri
7. Peter and the Wolf, children's tale for narrator & orchestra, Op. 67: "No sooner had Peter gone". Andante molto - Nervoso - Allegro -
8. Peter and the Wolf, children's tale for narrator & orchestra, Op. 67: "And now, this is how things stood". Allegro - Moderato
9. Peter and the Wolf, children's tale for narrator & orchestra, Op. 67: "In the meantime". Andantino, come prima - Vivo - Andante molto
10. Peter and the Wolf, children's tale for narrator & orchestra, Op. 67: "Meanwhile Peter made a lasso". Allegro - Poco meno mosso - Mod
11. Peter and the Wolf, children's tale for narrator & orchestra, Op. 67: "Just then, the hunters came out of the woods". Allegro moderat
12. Peter and the Wolf, children's tale for narrator & orchestra, Op. 67: "And there, imagine the triumphant procession". Moderato - Poco
13. La boîte à joujoux (The Toybox), ballet, L. 128: Prélude: Le Sommeil de la Boîte (The Sleeping Box)
14. La boîte à joujoux (The Toybox), ballet, L. 128: 1st Tableau: Le Magasin de Jouets (The Toy Store)
15. La boîte à joujoux (The Toybox), ballet, L. 128: 2nd Tableau: Le Champ Bataille (The Battlefield)
16. La boîte à joujoux (The Toybox), ballet, L. 128: 3rd Tableau: La Bergerie à Vendre (The Sheepfold for Sale)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8083 in Music
• Released on: 1994-11-15
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .22 pounds

Customer Reviews

Great expression, but poor mixing kills it
Peter and the Wolf is my favorite piece of music from my childhood, and I was quite pleased when someone gave me this CD for by birthday this year. The musicianship and narration are quite good: expressive and emotive.

Unfortunately, the volume range on the CD is quite wide, ranging from inaudible to bowel-quaking. In the mix, the orchestra is either at one extreme or the other, but the narration is almost always too quiet to make out against the music. In addition, I can hear several places in the piece where gain peaks have introduced distortion into the sound.

The music and narration are very well done, but the recording job was botched big time. I would recommend you purchase a different copy of Peter and the Wolf.

Poor Mixing really spoils this CD
I'm a real Patrick Stewart fan, so when I was looking for a copy of Peter and the Wolf for my daughter, this one caught my eye.

The music is excellent, and Patrick Stewart's narration is wonderful, but the recording level on the CD is so low that you must turn the volume up much farther than normal to hear it. When you kick the CD out (if you're using a player that defaults back to an FM receiver, you have to remember to turn the volume down first, or it'll blow your eardrums out.

In addition, the recording levels vary far too much across the recording. The levels for Stewart's narration, for instance, is very low. You have to turn it up to hear him, but then the drums which represent the hunter's rifles will almost blow you out of your chair. It gets to be very tiresome having to listen with one hand on the volume knob all the time. I was dissapointed.

Delightful performances
Perhaps I have the advantage of having a wonderful stereo system, but I do not experience the peaks and distortions that others claim on my CD of this wonderful recording. The only thing I noticed is that my volume had to be raised a bit more than usual, but there was no problem with that. Your mileage may vary, as they say, but this overall is a great piece to have.

The first piece on this disc is Sergei Prokofiev's 'Peter and the Wolf', a musical tale written for children. 'Peter and the Wolf' was written by Prokofiev, but is derivative of an older tale.

This is really a way to introduce children to the orchestra (and was a way for Prokofiev to keep his compositions going at a time in Stalinist Russia when music was legally required to be simple and understandable). The main characters include a bird (flute), duck (oboe), cat (clarinet), Peter's grandfather (bassoon), the wolf (a trio of French horns), hunters (percussion mostly, the timpani and bass drum, but also involves woodwinds), and Peter himself (the strings sections of the orchestra).

Patrick Stewart reads the narration of the story, read over the music and in gaps prepared by Prokofiev. The strains of Peter's theme and the other animals are familiar to children all over the world, and have been for generations, as this piece has been very popular, even serving as the inspiration for a Walt Disney production of the same theme, featuring Prokofiev's music. I must confess that it is a bit hard not to visualise Captain Picard narrating this piece; on the other hand, given the nature of the Star Trek character, this is very much in keeping as something Picard might do.

The second piece on this recording is Claude Debussy's 'The Toy Box', a ballet for children. This is also a well-known piece, though perhaps not as well known at the first. It does not feature narration, and is meant largely to introduce the ballet to children. Debussy wrote several pieces for children or evocative of children, some under the inspiration of his daughter.

This is not difficult music by any means, but the Ochrestre de L'Opera de Lyon under the direction of Kent Nagano have produced a superb musical performance of both pieces. This should be a delight to children and to adults.