GTMF offers canine-friendly version of ‘Peter and the Wolf’ – JH News&Guide
Wolves get a bad rap in stories like “The Three Little Pigs,” “Red Riding Hood,” “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” and countless others.
So when Jeff Counts, general manager of the Grand Teton Music Festival, asked Meaghan Heinrich, the festival’s curator of education, if she was interested in presenting Sergei Prokofiev’s musical tale “Peter and the Wolf,” she said yes — but with a some changes.
Heinrich will narrate the story while an 11-piece chamber orchestra, led by GTMF Resident Conductor Benjamin Manis, portrays the characters using certain instruments and motifs at July 16’s chamber music concert, starting at 7 p.m. in Walk Festival Hall.
“‘Peter and the Wolf’ is masterpiece,” Heinrich said. “Musicians love playing it, and in my mind it is quintessential musical storytelling. It was written for kids, but it holds up for all ages.”
Prokofiev wrote it in 1936 on a commission from the Central Children’s Theater in Moscow. He accomplished the job in a few short weeks, but was not crazy about the rhyming narrative that had been prepared, so he wrote what became the standard text, too.
The story tells of a young boy, Peter, living in the woods with his grandfather. His guardian warns Peter about a vicious wolf in the area, but the boy ventures out of their garden anyway and, sure enough, encounters the beast.
Per Prokofiev’s instructions, Peter is represented by a theme played by the string section. A flute plays the role of a bird, an oboe is a duck, and a clarinet imitates a neighborhood cat. The gruff grandfather is portrayed by a bassoon, and the wolf by three horns.
The piece has become one of the great standards of children’s classical music, perhaps matched only by Benjamin Britten’s “A Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra” (1945). But, Heinrich said, the story is rather dated and “kind of bizarre.” And, as usual, it puts the wolf in a bad light.
Taking advantage of the Yellowstone ecosystem’s unique place in the natural history of wolves in North America, she made some changes: She set the story in the Tetons, replaced the bird, duck and cat with a killdeer, a harlequin duck and a river otter, and turned the grandfather into a “grouchy park ranger,” she said. She also changed the ending to treat the wolf with a more dignity.
Before the concert, at 6:30, Susan Eirich, founder and director of the EarthFire Institute, a wolf sanctuary outside of Tetonia, Idaho, will give accurate wolf facts.
The concert will start with a short work, “Mirage,” also conducted by Manis, from Alex Turley, whose “the ocean’s dream of itself” will receive its world premiere by the festival orchestra in August. “Peter and the Wolf” will follow, and then there will be an intermission, with a cookie reception, with Brahms’ Piano Quintet in F minor making up the second half. That gives families the option of leaving after the first half, though all are, of course, welcome to stay, too.
Tickets cost $35, $5 for students and children. Get them by calling 307-733-1128, or visit GTMF.org.