Prokofiev - Peter and the Wolf / Narrated by Patrick Stewart · Opera de Lyon · Nagano

Sergey Prokofiev (Artist), Claude Debussy (Artist), Kent Nagano (Artist), Patrick Stewart (Artist), Orchestre de l'Opéra de Lyon (Artist)

Product Details

• Audio CD (November 15, 1994)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Erato
• ASIN: B000005EDG
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #8,633 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #6 in	Music > Classical > Featured Composers, A-Z > ( P ) > Prokofiev, Sergei
  #16 in	Music > Classical > Ballets & Dances > Historical Periods > Modern & 20th Century
  #20 in	Music > Classical > Featured Composers, A-Z > ( D ) > Debussy, Claude

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

104 of 107 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Great expression, but poor mixing kills it, April 25, 2001

By	Jim Christopher (Charlotte, NC United States) - See all my reviews

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.

60 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Poor Mixing really spoils this CD, March 3, 2001

By	Len (Butler, MO USA) - See all my reviews

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.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delightful performances, October 21, 2005

By	FrKurt Messick "FrKurt Messick" (Bloomington, IN USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

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.