The Tortoise and the Hare & Other Tales

Chronique

Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf and Saint-Saëns' Carnival of the Animals are the gold standards of pieces for young audiences, and they remain unparalleled, but Poulenc's L'histoire de Babar and George Kleinsinger's Tubby the Tuba are attractive additions to the small repertoire for this genre. American composer Daniel Dorff has made something of a specialty of concert music for children, and this Bridge release includes seven of his children's pieces for narrator and orchestra. Billy and the Carnival, like Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, introduces the various instruments. It doesn't have the musical coherence of Britten's work, but it's rowdy and playful, although the narration is a little too didactic for comfort; a trombone tells Billy, "We can be friends if you listen to our music...it's fun to hear the orchestra when you've made friends with the instruments." The most effective pieces are Three Fun Fables based on Aesop, particularly The Tortoise and the Hare, because they have the most musical continuity and stylistic integrity; the other pieces rely too heavily on sound effects and broad humor to be of strong interest to adults. Dorff's works have already begun to establish themselves with programmers looking for repertoire for children's concerts, and that's a significant contribution to the future of classical music.
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