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The central children’s theatre in Moscow commissioned Sergei Prokofiev to write this to cultivate “musical tastes in children from the first years of school”, and it’s gone on to become pretty much the children’s classical music classic. Composed for narrator and orchestra, it’s the story of a young boy outsmarting everyone and catching a wolf. Each character has its own tune played on a particular instrument - flute for the bird, strings for Peter, horns for the wolf, etc.  - and the tunes re-appear throughout the piece as the story progresses. I think listening to this as a kid is where I got the idea that on oboe sounds like a duck (which, now that I think of it, it doesn’t really all that much).

This particular recording is narrated by Dame Edna Everage and she does a wonderfully dramatic job of it - her “LOOK OUT!” when Peter spots the cat stalking his friend the bird nearly made Isabelle leap out of her car seat.  The orchestra is great too - they play with relish, and the strings in particular are very rich-sounding, even on our very dodgy car stereo  (we have to copy CDs to tape because there’s no CD player in the car).

The music itself might not be what you’d expect from a 20th century composer - it’s very melodic, and I was amazed to find I could still sing along with most of it despite not having heard it since my own childhood. Peter’s and the cat’s tunes are the real stand-outs, both of which I’m sure everyone in my office knows now from me whistling them going up and down the stairs. The pieces are short enough for young attention spans and the story keeps Isabelle engaged, so it’s ideal for the car - we brought it on holiday with us a while ago, and between this and the Classical Kids CD “Beethoven Lives Upstairs” Isabelle was kept absorbed for hours.

Also on the CD is “Babar the Elephant” by Francis Poulenc, another story with musical interludes. The story - about a little elephant who, when his mother is shot by a hunter, goes to live in a town where he wears clothes and drives a car, eventually driving it home to the forest where he, out of the blue, becomes king - is utterly bizarre, like one of the crazy stream-of-consciousness stories Isabelle makes up herself. The music is, mostly, less accessible than Peter - the harmonies more astringent and the melodies less hummable. That’s not to say that I don’t like it - it reminds me of Stravinsky’s ballets a bit, which I love, but it’s inclined to make Isabelle fall asleep.

Then right at the end is Benjamin Britten’s “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra”, which is a more explicitly educational introduction to the different orchestral instruments, but we seldom make it this far before Isabelle demands to go back and listen to the Peter story again.