They start music appreciation classes very early in my school district and, as luck would have it (and without any calls or letters on my part), there is always a healthy mix of Russian composers in these classes.

One of the first pieces that the kids get to listen to is Peter and the Wolf, the piece composed by Sergei Prokofiev in 1936, based on a tale that Prokofiev himself had written. There are many, many recordings that have been made of the piece, and it seems, from the cultural calendars that I do every month, that it is almost always playing somewhere. Earlier this month, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra staged a version with the Bob Brown Puppets for its popular family music series. There have been ballet versions and it was even animated by The Walt Disney Company in 1946.

It is a good piece of Russian culture for children who have been adopted from Russia on several fronts. The main character, Peter, is an orphan who triumphs over adversity (he lives with his grandfather; I'm not sure there were orphanages when Prokofiev wrote the story.) It is the key work by one of Russia's greatest composers. And there is no better introduction to what instruments sound like and how to tell a story through sound.

Each of the characters in the piece is represented by an instrument. The bird is a flute, the duck is an oboe, the wolf gets three French horns. Grandfather is a bassoon (would anyone know what a bassoon sounds like if not for this piece?) and Peter is all strings. To get an idea, check out the audio files at the bottom of this Web site. They are courtesy of Phil Tulga, an elementary school music teacher who was graduated from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y. (I happen to be working this month on some pieces about Rochester for USAirways' inflight magazine!) He has several interesting music appreciation activities on the site that are worth exploring.

Peter's intrepid character is a pretty good facsimile of Prokofiev's own life. He was born in Ukraine when it was still part of tsarist Russia, attended the St. Petersburg Conservatory as the Bolsheviks were gaining steam. When they took over, Prokofiev went abroad, living for a time in the United States before returning to the then Soviet Union in 1934. Peter and the Wolf was one of the first pieces he wrote upon his return.