'The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra' - Benjamin Britten
Liceu Conservatory Classical Orchestra
Manel Valdivieso, conductor

The Liceu Conservatory Classical Orchestra is made up of 1st grade students who experience their first contact with an orchestral ensemble at the Conservatory, beyond the individual or chamber study of their instrument.

This year, the concert offered by Classical Orchestra conducted by Manel Valdivieso, brought us a great key work of symphonism that is surely the most popular orchestral work by English composer Benjamin Britten, The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.

Written in 1945 and with the subtitle 'Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell', this work was an order from the Ministry of Culture for a documentary film by Muir Mathieson that had similar pedagogical purposes to Peter and the Wolf, written by Prokofiev years before: showing the different instruments and families (with their colors and timbral capacities) that make up the western symphony orchestra (in the original recording, the London Symphony conducted by Malcom Sargent).

For his Guide, Britten took a theme of the incidental "Rondeau" composed by Purcell for a 1695 production of the play Abdelazer or The Moor s Revenge, by Aphra Behn. Nowadays, it has become one of the most used works in children music education around the world.