Please note that this January 26th performance is a special Gala concert ($100) which will include a post-performance reception with the featured artists. Ticket purchasers for this special evening will be partnering with Great Bend and Peninsula Credit Union to help make this performance, and a week of music educational curriculum, available to all Mason County 4th and 5th graders. Please also note that half of your ticket price to this special event is tax deductible, and that we’ll be repeating this performance at our regular ticket prices ($20 general admission, $16 senior/military) on Sunday afternoon, January 27 – click this link for tickets to that performance.
Saturday, January 26 | 7:00 PM, Gala $100
Sunday, January 27 | 3:00 PM, $20 GENERAL | $16 SENIOR/MILITARY
Peter and the Wolf is a musical fairytale. It isn’t an opera (there’s no singing) and it isn’t a ballet (although it can be performed that way); nor is it a play (there are no actors). Instead it’s a musical tale in which the orchestra tells the story, helped along by a narrator – in our case, Jeff Slakey from iFiberOne News Radio. We won’t spoil the story by letting on what happens here. But we will tell you who the characters are!
Prokofiev wrote Peter and the Wolf to help children get to know the instruments of the orchestra. So this fantastic tale with its charming music has an ulterior motive. Each character in Prokofiev’s musical fairytale is represented by a different instrument of the orchestra: the bird by a twittering flute, the duck by a plangent oboe, the cat by a mellifluous clarinet, Peter’s grumpy grandfather by a bassoon, the dreaded wolf by three horns, and Peter by all the strings of the orchestra playing a jaunty march tune. The timpani (or “kettledrums”) have their part to play when the hunters turn up, shooting their rifles.
Peter and the Wolf was an immediate success with the toughest critics of all: children. Prokofiev wrote the story himself and, since he had two sons of his own, he knew how to capture the childish imagination by making Peter a bold but rebellious hero: “Peter paid no attention to his grandfather. Boys like him are not afraid of wolves.”
Also featuring Elgar’s vivid song cycle “Sea Pictures” featuring soprano Tess Altiveros, and Vivaldi’s “Winter” from his Four Seasons, in a program of vibrant programmatic music – music that tells stories and paints pictures. Don’t miss it!