Salisbury Cathedral is excited to announce that the actress and singer Toyah Willcox will narrate Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf on Saturday 5 November, the last concert of this year’s successful 2022 Organ Festival. Cunningly timed to work in with fireworks displays later in the day, the concert starts at 14.00.
No stranger to Wiltshire (Toyah and her husband Robert Fripp lived in Broad Chalke in the 1980/90s). Toyah will tell the story of the heroic small boy Peter who takes on a fearsome Wolf, accompanied by a duck, a bird and a cat.
John Challenger, Assistant Director of Music at Salisbury Cathedral takes on the musical role in this performance. His challenge is to realise Prokofiev’s orchestral work on the 140-year-old Father Willis organ, which will involve a deal of experimentation ahead of the concert.
Also in the programme is the final movement of Saint-Saens Third Symphony, used in the much-loved film Babe, which tells the story of a brave little pig that wanted to herd sheep, and The Swan from his Carnival of the Animals.
The Evening will be compered by the well-known local choir director and singer, Steve Abbott. Steve heads up the Cathedral’s Youth Choir and is Musical Director of the St. John Singers. He began his career as a Cathedral chorister and now sings counter tenor in the Cathedral Choir.