Eloquence Classics

So perennial are the texts and music for ‘Peter and the Wolf’ and ‘The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra’ that many a celebrity has recorded it. Both works have drawn some of the most famous actors, including Meryl Streep and here, a young Sean Connery (in 1966). It was vividly recorded for Decca’s Phase 4 series, as was, in 1973, Prokofiev’s ‘Lieutenant Kijé’. The lieutenant in question is a creation of bureaucracy, a non-existent character fleshed out with a life to satisfy the curiosity of the Tsar who has misheard a phrase (in Russian, “the lieutenants, however”) as the lieutenant’s name. The suite follows the soldier’s life story from birth through first love and marriage and the famous sleigh-ride in the Troika before finally being put to rest in a fictitious death and burial.