Mondays At One: Songs Of Innocence And Of Experience

Birth and death have always been the most significant events in human experience, to which society has, throughout the ages, responded in different ways. The very young and the old have always had a close, touching affinity. Mussorgsky’s song cycle The Nursery is a uniquely engaging picture of what it might be like to grow up in 1870’s Russia, while his epic song cycle The Songs and Dances of Death is a characteristically direct and bleak picture of encounters with death. Two sides of the same coin.

Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, written in 1936, commissioned by Natalya Sat’s Children’s Theatre demonstrate Prokofiev’s natural gift for story-telling
and characterisation. His Three Children’s Songs were written immediately afterwards. Chatterbox and The Sweet Song were eventually joined by Three Little Pigs to make the full set of three.