“Peter and the Wolf”: The Cassette That Taught Me to Listen

Before ballet.

Before theatre.

Before I knew the difference between a violin and a viola — there was Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf.

Mine wasn’t just any version.

It was the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Eugene Ormandy, narrated by Cyril Ritchard — a small treasure from another time, when art for children was treated with care, dignity, and the quiet expectation that it would endure.

Ritchard’s narration didn’t simply tell the story; it embodied it. His voice danced and prowled, teasing the orchestra forward as if he were conducting with words. The clarinet became the cat’s sly step; the flute, the bird’s flutter of freedom. The strings shimmered like air in motion. I remember holding my breath as the timpani rumbled — the wolf’s presence announced long before he appeared.

I didn’t realize it then — six years old in 1990, growing up in Portland, Oregon — but this was choreography.
The music moved like bodies do.
Every phrase had a gesture; every instrument, a character.

That cassette — a modest, plastic rectangle with its faint hiss and click — taught me the fundamentals of theatre, of ballet, of storytelling itself. It showed me that music narrates, that sound can act, and that emotion can exist without dialogue.

Archival Note: The accompanying storybook was illustrated by Erna Voigt, a German artist whose work carried the soft lyricism and precision typical of mid-century European children’s illustration. Her brushwork gave Peter and the Wolf its tender realism — where every feather, paw, and tree branch seemed to breathe. In retrospect, her images belonged to the same tradition that shaped much of the 20th-century stage and ballet design: storytelling as an act of craftsmanship, composition, and wonder.

Even now, when I sit in the darkened hush before a ballet begins — Dracula, Sleeping Beauty, or something new entirely — I still hear echoes of that recording. Somewhere between the curtain’s rise and the orchestra’s swell, I catch a trace of Ritchard’s voice, the proud trumpet of Peter, the warmth of Prokofiev’s score carried across decades.

That cassette, long since vanished from stores and shelves, remains in my archive — not as an object, but as a foundation.

Because every archivist has an origin story.

Mine begins with a storybook, a recording, and a six-year-old boy learning how to listen — one he would play endlessly before bedtime.

🎧 Listen: Peter and the Wolf, Op. 67 — narrated by Cyril Ritchard, performed by The Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Eugene Ormandy (Sony Classical).
A 20th-century treasure of musical storytelling, still resonant after decades.