Late last year, Cherry Red’s Esoteric Recordings arm reissued the rock-meets-classical interpretation of Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf conceived by Jack Lancaster (Blodwyn Pig) and Robin Lumley (Brand X). Now, on March 25, Esoteric will turn its attention to the next album from the pair of Lancaster and Lumley. The 1976 concept album Marscape was inspired by the landing on Mars of NASA’s Viking Explorer 2 in September of that year Though the success of Peter and the Wolf directly led to Marscape, it was far from the first collaboration of…
Classical Goes Rock: Prog “Peter and the Wolf” Featuring Manfred Mann, Brian Eno, Phil Collins, Stephane Grappelli Returns to CD from Cherry Red, Esoteric
Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev wrote Peter and the Wolf in 1936 as “a symphonic fairy tale for children.” As conceived, the narrator tells a story for children in which every character is musically “played” by a different instrument, i.e., the bird is a flute, the duck is an oboe, the cat is a clarinet, the grandfather is a bassoon, the Wolf is French horns, the hunters are woodwinds and trumpets, and Peter is string instruments. Prokofiev’s composition earned the attention of Walt Disney who famously turned it into a 15-minute animated short…
