Earlier this week, music journalist Bill Flanagan wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times in which he mused about whether rock ’n’ roll’s veteran status had robbed the genre of its future. Rock, he wrote, “is now where jazz was in the early 1980s. Its form is mostly fixed.” What would this mean for its appeal to upcoming generations of young people?
Imagine, then, the conundrum this presents for classical music, an art form hundreds of years rock’s senior. Of course, conservatories continue to turn out brilliant players, and there may not be a single child in the Western world unfamiliar with the opening four-note motif of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. But in a culture in which city orchestras are increasingly desperate to attract the patronage of anyone under retirement age, the key – now more than ever – is to lock in the next several decades of audiences as early in life as possible.
Which is where legendary composer Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf comes in. When the VAM (Vancouver Academy of Music) Symphony Orchestra performs it Sunday (Nov. 27), in collaboration with Goh Ballet and the Vancouver Bach Choir, it will be employing a strategy that dates back to the composition’s creation in 1936.
Peter and the Wolf was commissioned by Russian stage director Natalya Stats and her Moscow Musical Theater for Children to “foster cultural curiosity among young people,” explains Leslie Dala, music director of both the VAM Symphony Orchestra and the Vancouver Bach Choir, who will be conducting Sunday’s afternoon performance. “I think they were aiming it at children in grades one and two.”
The story of a young boy who ignores his grandfather’s cautions and becomes a hero, Peter was a flop initially, but has since become one of classical music’s best-known pieces. Celebrities as diverse as David Bowie, Alec Guinness and Patrick Stewart have provided its narration; for the VAM’s performance, Dala secured the variously lulling and commanding voice of award-winning actor and Bard on the Beach founder Christopher Gaze (“So we’ve already got our ace of spades,” he says). Meanwhile, the addition of dancers from Goh Ballet – a first-time pairing – will add rare visual flare to the tale.
So beloved is Peter, in fact, that Gala confesses to using it as something of a Trojan horse for the matinée, which was conceived as a showcase for works by Russian composers. “Like any concert program, you pick a piece that people are going to respond to,” he says. “Originally, Peter wasn’t the cornerstone of the program. [The cornerstone] was the work in the second half, The Bells by Rachmaninoff. That’s a piece I’ve never done and that, as far as I know, hasn’t been done in this city probably in the last 30 or 40 years – possibly longer. It’s a work that Rachmaninoff considered his best.”
But no matter what receives top billing – at this performance or any other – Dala is confident that classical music will continue to make converts of all ages. All the masses need is an opportunity to hear – and, ideally, see – it, and even the most easily distracted audiences will sit up and dive in.
“I have two kids of my own. The digital age is upon us with such a fury,” says Dala. “But I tell you, I’ve gone with my kids to the VSO school shows, and these kids, they sit riveted. What’s amazing to me is that, for some of them, it’s the very first time they’ve ever heard some of these instruments, never mind a symphony orchestra. It can be life changing. It was in my case.”
VAM Symphony Orchestra performs Peter and the Wolf on Sunday, Nov. 27, at the Orpheum Theatre, 2pm. Tickets $10-$15 from Eventbrite.ca
