Prokofiev: Peter And The Wolf, Op. 67 – A Musical Tale For Children

1962 Concert Hall Records CM 88 E

Ah, Prokofiev’s evergreen children’s introduction to classical music and the instruments of the orchestra… There have been nearly 80 versions of this classic piece (including some electronic scores), narrated by even more celebrity guests (some recordings featured two speakers, or even three, such as the curious teaming of Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev and Sophia Loren), with appearances ranging from Basil Rathbone, Peter Ustinov, Alec Guinness, Richard Attenborough, Christopher Lee and Alexander Armstrong to Lorne Green, Sean Connery, Jacqueline Du Pre, Mia Farrow, Patrick Stewart, Sting, Sharon Stone, Viola Davis and David Bowie. However, the version that survives in my collection is a tad more old school…

My older brother Peter is a keen follower of classical music and, for a time during the late 1950s and early 1960s, belonged to a mail order music club which released under the name of Concert Hall, which was founded as the Concert Hall Society, Inc in 1946 by brothers Samuel and David Josefowitz, and at one time boasted 600,000 members. Following a few sales and mergers during the 1950s and 1960s, after which the release schedules became very sketchy, things seemed to wind down, with few discs appearing since the 1970s. However, some sources suggest the company still exists today, on paper at least, being described as an ‘active entity’ with addresses listed in Germany and on the Big Apple's Fifth Avenue, while others refer to these as 'obsolete' - so who knows?

Anyways, the version my brother purchased features the Society’s trademark blue-and-silver record label with the conductor’s gloves-and-baton motif, and came with a lavishly illustrated, two-colour booklet picturing the instruments of the orchestra, along with all the main characters (although, oddly enough, there was no sleeve, just a corrugated cardboard envelope for shipping). The narration was by Kenneth Horne (1907 – 1969), the much-loved British comedian, actor and businessman who starred in many hugely popular radio and TV programmes, including Much-Binding-In-The Marsh, Twenty Questions, Round The Horne, Kaleidoscope, What’s My Line and Horne ’A Plenty. His performance here finds him on a tad more serious form, but we kids (who knew Peter’s ‘theme’ from the Granada children’s show Zoo Time, hosted by Desmond Morris, still going strong at 96) loved Horne's kindly yet authoritative delivery, which still managed to instil panic over the poor old duck’s desperate flight from the wolf.

The music – performed on record elsewhere by such luminaries as the Philharmonia Orchestra under Herbert von Karajan, the New York and Vienna Philharmonics and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, but provided here by the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Romanian conductor Otto Ackermann – is fabulous and unforgettable. I've always found the Bird's fluttering flute somewhat fussy and irritating, but the sombre, plodding Grandfather's bassoon is disturbingly intimidating, the Cat's jaunty clarinet (played 'in a low register') sticks infectiously in the mind and the Wolf, chillingly voiced by three horns, is simply sublime. Encore!