Monday, July 20, 2009

Prokofiev's "Peter & the Wolf", Animated

When I was a little girl, my mom played old tapes of one of her favorite classical compositions for me and my sister, over and over.  By tapes, I mean a huge reel as big as a dinner plate on an AKAI player.  (This was in the early 70s, before the days of the cassette tape.) We loved Sergei Prokofiev's 1936 work Peter and the Wolf - the main melody was as memorable as our other favorite, the Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite".  What made it stand apart from other works for us was that the recording had a narrator.  Now I am not sure, but I seem to remember that at the time it was the late British actor Sir Peter Ustinov.  (Listen to snippets for free here.)

While Joy was googling for a video of an orchestral performance on Youtube, what came up was a 2006 stop-motion animated film directed by Suzie Templeton that apparently won a BAFTA in 2007 and an Academy Award in 2008! (And three other awards.)   I highly recommend it to all parents.  Here it is, in four parts, on Youtube:









This series was originally posted on Youtube by Actealcien.


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