Magic Maestro: Storytelling Goes to the Symphony

Wolves have suddenly become, in our entirely wolf-less house, the dangerous and oft-cited agents of evil the Brothers Grimm intended them to be, and we owe at least as much of this to our nearly-three-year-old daughter Z's discovery of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf as to her even earlier fascination with an imaginative audio version of the Three Little Pigs, part of a collection that will get its own review soon. We requested a copy of Magic Maestro's recording of Prokofiev's charming and beautiful work for children a month or so ago, and Z has been insisting on listening to it at regular intervals ever since. A few nights ago she even requested to listen to it rather than watching a video while she took her nightly nebulizer-assisted breathing treatment. And now it's wolves this and wolves that. Last night we (a) heard a fantastical story about she and her friends being "blue and pink wolveses," not to mention (b) listening in on her playing with small metal hair barrettes, one of which was a "very mean wolf."

Although Magic Maestro has made a whole series of such recordings, we figured our request would be a one-off; Peter and the Wolf is their latest, released just last month. But the production was excellent, with lively narration, a wonderful performance, and plenty of extras to make the experience a memorable one, like a narrative track that explored the music's themes and background, and a full version of Peter without narration. I am pretty sure that after a few more listens Z will be able to interpret the piece without the narrative, which is an interesting prospect. If you are not familiar with the piece, it features individual instruments which perform musical themes associated with each of several characters (Peter, his grandfather, a bird, a duck, a cat, a wolf, and some hunters) which are blended into an overall composition that tells the story of Peter, who works with his animal friends to capture a wolf. Thus it creates a "musical narrative," designed to be told by the orchestra itself, without narration.

The narrative voice of "Yadu" (Conrad Cynzski, a professor of humanities at Minnesota State University) is a bit of an acquired taste, but we quickly acquired it. If you're looking for a more subdued reading, you might try the David Bowie version. Naturally it has some pretty goofy cover art but from the samples we heard it sounded very good. There is also a version which comes with a storybook and apparently has a doctored, "happier" ending. We found Magic Maestro's version, which ends with the duck (swallowed in one gulp by the wolf) quacking plaintively from the wolf's stomach as he is carried off to the zoo, to be a reasonably open-ended conclusion which allows for pleasant if vague allusions to its eventual rescue.

We are always on the lookout for good non-televised media to entertain and engage Z, and she enjoyed Peter so much that we took a closer look at Magic Maestro's back catalog. When we did, we discovered that the conductor had actually produced a couple of titles in the series for which he had written an original musical score. Stephen Simon, former conductor of the Washington Chamber Orchestra, developed numerous children's concerts during his tenure at the Kennedy Center, each a story wrapped around a piece of music. He and his wife have since been recording and releasing these works on CD, with titles ranging from The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Juanita the Spanish Lobster, and Peter (all featuring music by other composers) to Mike Mullligan and His Steam Shovel and Casey at the Bat, both developed using original compositions by Simon.

If you read yesterday's post about Scholastic's new video storybook version of Mike Mulligan, you will know where this is headed. We requested Magic Maestro's version of Mike, and first heard it a couple of weeks ago.

Simon drew heavily on two ideas in composing the score: the percussive clank of machines, and the Irish background implied by a construction worker with the last name of "Mulligan," and the result is spectacular, a partial orchestra combined with a SCUBA tank (to simulate the sound of steam), an anvil for the percussionist (to simulate a pile driver), and Uillean pipes (bagpipes). Simon's score includes soaring musical themes that will quickly become associated with the story in listeners' minds, including a "quodlibet" (overlapping combination) of the American folk songs "The Erie Canal" and "What Shall We Do With a Drunken Sailor." The piece is energetic, rollicking, beautifully executed, and great fun.

The first time we played the disc, Z had never heard the story and had a hard time following along. Then I had her switch to the video storybook of Mike Mulligan - we received both in the mail on the same day - and she watched it once. Afterwards I explained that the CD was the same story but with some fun music, too, and she listened quite happily while she played with her toys. I wasn't sure how much of the story she was following then, but she has asked to hear the CD, not watch the video, several times since. Magic Maestro even sells a gift pack of the Mike Mulligan album packaged with a copy of the book.

You can listen to music samples and buy any of Magic Maestro's albums from Magic Maestro's website, or hear samples, read customer reviews, and purchase them on Amazon.com.