Peter and the Wolf

Date: Friday 9th July, 3PM

Venue: The Priory Church, Leominster

Tickets: £5 (adults). Children are FREE but booking essential.

A short ‘introduction to the organ’ will be followed by a performance of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. Transcribed and performed by Peter Dyke (of Hereford Cathedral) and narrated by Richard Brookman.

Peter Dyke

Peter Dyke was born in Hertfordshire and was organ scholar of Robinson College, Cambridge. He was awarded second prize in the prestigious Interpretation Competition at the St Albans International Organ Festival in 1993, and in 1998 he took up his current post as Assistant Organist at Hereford Cathedral, where, as well as accompanying the daily services, he has played regularly for the choir on frequent radio and television broadcasts. He founded and directs the Cathedral’s Voluntary Choir, which has made five tours to Germany and which actively supports young composers of sacred music. One of the choir’s innovations was a composition competition at the 2015 Three Choirs Festival which resulted in entries from all over the world, and the winning item being premiered by the choir and published by Novello.

Peter has a keen interest in teaching and has helped to found two highly successful organists’ training scheme; his work in this and other fields was recognised by the Royal School of Church Music in its awarding him the ARSCM in 2010.

Recent events have included recitals all over the UK, in Nuremberg’s Lorenzkirche, in Paris (Notre Dame Cathedral), and Sées (Normandy), and a seventh “home” Three Choirs Festival in 2018. In 2005 he recorded a series of short programmes from Germany for BBC Radio 3 exploring J S Bach’s 260-mile journey on foot to Lübeck in 1705, broadcast as part of that network’s highly successful A Bach Christmas. His most recent solo CD, including his own transcription of Elgar’s Enigma Variations, quickly received favourable reviews at home and internationally.

Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf is one of the best-loved pieces in the orchestral repertoire. The work was composed in 1936 with the aim of introducing children to the various instruments of the orchestra. Individual instruments represent characters in a story, which vividly conjures up the dangers and mystery of the Russian forest.

The organ has often been referred to as “The King of Instruments”, and it has a unique ability to enable a single player to imitate many of the different orchestral instruments. Peter Dyke’s transcription of Peter and the Wolf makes use of many of the orchestral stops on the Leominster Priory organ – the flute, the oboe, the clarinet – and finds equally characteristic sounds to represent the wolf, the huntsmen and, of course, the character of Peter himself.

Over the years, the role of the narrator has been taken by an enormous range of performers, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Peter Ustinov, Angela Rippon, Sting, Lenny Henry and David Tennant. At this performance, the narrator is Leominster’s very own Town Crier, Richard Brookman.

Book your tickets online by clicking below, or call into the Leominster Tourist Information Centre to purchase and collect.