Peter and the Wolf

Peter and the Wolf is a composition by Sergei Prokofiev written in 1936 after his return to the Soviet Union. It is a children's story (with both music and text by Prokofiev), spoken by a narrator accompanied by the orchestra.

The story

Peter, a young boy, lives with his grandfather in the Russian countryside. One day Peter goes out into the meadow, leaving the garden gate open, and the duck that lives in the yard takes the opportunity to go swimming on the nearby pond. He starts arguing with a little bird ("What kind of bird are you if you can't fly?" - "What kind of bird are you if you can't swim?"). Peter's pet cat sneaks up on them, and the bird – warned by Peter - flies into a tall tree while the duck swims to safety in the middle of the pond.

Peter's grumpy grandfather scolds Peter for being outside in the meadow ("Suppose a wolf came out of the forest?"), takes him back into the house and locks the gate. Shortly afterwards "a big, grey wolf" does indeed come out of the woods. The cat quickly climbs into the tree, but the duck, who has excitedly jumped out of the pond, is chased, overtaken and gulped down by the wolf.

Peter fetches a rope and climbs over the garden wall into the tree. He asks the bird to fly around the wolf's head to distract him, while he lowers a noose and catches the wolf by his tail. The wolf struggles to get free, but Peter ties the rope to the tree and the noose only gets tighter.

Some hunters, who have been tracking the wolf, come out of the forest ready to shoot, but Peter gets them to help him take the wolf to the zoo in a victory parade that includes himself, the bird, the hunters leading the wolf, the cat and grumpy grumbling Grandfather ("What if Peter hadn't caught the wolf? What then?").

In the story's ending, the listener is told that "if you listen very carefully, you'd hear the duck quacking inside the wolf's belly, because the wolf in his hurry had swallowed her alive."

Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) was born in the village of Sontsovka in the Donets region of the Ukraine. He was a child prodigy on the order of Mozart, composing for piano at age five and writing an opera at nine. His first teacher was his mother, a talented pianist.He attended the St. Petersburg Conservatory from 1904 to 1914, winning the Anton Rubinstein prize for best student pianist when he graduated. He traveled widely, spending many years in London and Paris, and toured the United States five times.

In 1936, Prokofiev returned to settle permanently in the Soviet Union. One of his first compositions after his return was Peter and the Wolf, written in just two weeks in April of 1936 for a children's theater in Moscow. Prokofiev invented the story and wrote the narration himself, drawing on memories of his own childhood. He constructed the music as a child's introduction to the orchestra, with each character in the story represented by a different instrument or group of instruments: Peter by the strings, the bird by the flute, the duck by the oboe, the cat by the clarinet, the wolf

by the horn section, and so on.

The Mongolian Snow Orchestra

Music is an integral part of Mongolian culture. Among the unique contributions of Mongolia to the world's musical culture are the Mongolian Snow Orchestra, the long songs, one of the greatest features of the Mongolian music, overtone singing and morin khuur, the horse-headed fiddle.

Founded in 1992, the last time the Mongolian Snow Orchestra the orchestra had gone in for something as big was in 2002, when it presented five concerts for its 10th anniversary.

The horse-headed violin or the Morin Khuur represents Mongolia worldwide as its national brand. The orchestra is aware of its responsibilities and tries to live up to  people’s expectations. “We perform everything from a simple folk melody to opera and ballet music, from dance music to music suites, and from solo concert to a symphony orchestra,” says Batchuluun, who has been leading it for the years.

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