About the work
Sergei Prokofiev's musical fairy tale for narrator and orchestra was composed in 1936 on commission from the Moscow Central Children's Theatre. The roughly 25-minute work has become one of the most-performed pieces for introducing children to the symphony orchestra — each character is assigned a specific instrument.
Plot
Young Peter lives with his grandfather at the edge of a forest. One morning he leaves the garden gate open — the duck swims in the pond, the bird chirps in the tree and the cat slinks through the grass. Grandfather angrily fetches Peter inside, since a wolf might come out of the forest. Sure enough, the wolf appears, eats the duck and circles the tree where the bird and cat have taken refuge. Peter secretly fetches a rope, climbs over the wall and catches the wolf: while the bird distracts him, Peter loops the rope around his tail. Hunters arrive. In a triumphant march the wolf is led off to the zoo — and the duck, still alive in his belly, can be heard faintly quacking inside.
Cultural significance
Peter and the Wolf is one of the most popular classical works of the twentieth century. Its instrument-character mapping (strings = Peter, flute = bird, oboe = duck, clarinet = cat, bassoon = grandfather, horns = wolf, timpani = hunters) belongs to the basic vocabulary of music education. Narrator recordings exist by figures as varied as David Bowie, Sting, Patrick Stewart and Sophia Loren; Disney made an animated version in 1946.