Benjamin Britten

David Bowie Narrates Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf

David Bowie Narrates Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf is a classical music album originally released by RCA Red Seal Records on 2 May 1978. Produced by Jay David Saks, the first side contains a

Release history#

David Bowie Narrates Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf was released on 2 May 1978 on the RCA Red Seal label. The Bowie-narrated Peter and the Wolf appeared on side A, and a music-only recording of the English composer Benjamin Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra (1945) appeared on side B, At the 21st Annual Grammy Awards in 1979, Peter and the Wolf was nominated for Best Recording for Children, losing the award to The Muppet Show, the first soundtrack album to the television show of the same name. The original 1978 US LP was pressed on green vinyl and included liner notes written by Mary Campbell. The album was also issued on 8-track and was later reissued on Compact disc and MP3. The 1994 reissue replaced the Nutcracker Suite with an Ormandy/Philadelphia Orchestra recording of Camille Saint-Saëns’s The Carnival of the Animals. Another reissue of the original LP by RCA/Music On Vinyl followed on 23 October 2014.

Reception#

Peter and the Wolf has received positive reviews from music critics. Reviewers described Bowie’s narration as “charming”, “splendid” and “engaging”. In later decades, author Thomas Jerome Seabrook highlighted Bowie’s “wide-eyed and enthusiastic delivery”, while Peter Dobrin of The Philadelphia Inquirer praised Bowie’s use of different voices for the characters, saying: “Even in 1978 and even in a children’s recording, Bowie was imploring his listeners to think differently about the power of ambiguity.” A review published in the Reno Gazette-Journal called the project “surprisingly refreshing” and declared: In a review for AllMusic, Joe Viglione called the LP a “remarkable and well-crafted project”. Paul Howlett of The Guardian felt the project “sits quite neatly” in Bowie’s discography. In his book The Complete David Bowie, Nicholas Pegg writes: “While not to be compared with John Gielgud’s definitive recording, Bowie’s narration has genuine charm. This is an accomplished piece of work and a fascinating curio from a period in which his other unlikely collaborations embraced figures as diverse as Marc Bolan, Bing Crosby and Marlene Dietrich.”

Track listing#

Track lengths were not listed on the original 1978 LP. The below lengths are from the 1992 US release. Side one #Peter and the Wolf, Op. 67 (Sergei Prokofiev) – 27:08 Side two #Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, Op. 34 (Benjamin Britten) – 17:09 1992 US release #The Nutcracker Suite (Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky) – 23:57

Personnel#

According to Chris O’Leary: *David Bowie – narrator (side A) *Philadelphia Orchestra – all instruments *Eugene Ormandy – conductor Production *Jay David Saks / Max Wilcox – producer *Paul Goodman – engineer *J.J. Stelmach – art direction *Mary Campbell – liner notes *Tom Kelley – cover photo

Composer: Benjamin Britten