Mission: orchestra!

From youth, for youth! Britten, ever the teacher, decided to introduce the instruments of the orchestra and their families in a series of variations on a theme by his compatriot Henry Purcell. The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra functions as a veritable illustrated dictionary of the components of an orchestra. Elgar, meanwhile, in his later years, dug out a series of pieces he had written as a child. He brilliantly orchestrated them into two suites entitled The Wand of Youth, which plunge us into a world populated by bears, butterflies, giants and fairies!