Skip to main content

The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra


Birmingham’s Symphony Hall is an impressive venue. What better place, therefore, to see and hear the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) perform a special family concert: The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra.

When Catherine Arlidge walked onto the stage to present the show, I just knew that we were going to enjoy it. I have been to family concerts hosted by her before and she has a relaxed, fun style that puts everyone at ease. The concert was split into bite sized chunks with children waiting for the pause button visual at the end of musical pieces to shout out “PAUSE" before finding out more about the orchestra and enjoying games with Catherine. The show lasted about an hour and passed quickly- even for my eight month old who was being bounced on my lap.

Catherine explained that the orchestra was colour coded for the performance. For instance, all the strings were wearing red. This visual image made it very straightforward for the children in the audience to understand how the orchestra was made up. The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra uses an arrangement by Benjamin Britten to show off each of the sections. We heard each section of the orchestra play so that we could really hear the different sounds of the instruments.



The games need a special mention. Adults were pitched against children in games of hangman where you had to guess musical instrument names. What the children found particularly funny was that the adults’ clues were too hard and they kept losing. We learned about obscure musical instruments like the loophonium and Picasso guitar. This provoked plenty of laughter from the children.

Our favourite part of the show was undoubtedly hearing the orchestra perform. Children all around us were enjoying the music. Some were sitting silently, absorbed and watching but others were dancing along or pointing things out. My wriggly baby was ‘shouting’ along at times. No one minded- most people there were parents, grandparent, aunts or uncles. The children were enjoying the show and part of it. CBSO family concerts don’t just pretend to be relaxed, they actually are.

My family definitely want to go along to another CBSO family concert. As we drove home, we talked about our favourite instruments in the orchestra and the funny parts of the show that we had enjoyed. We had heard pieces by Tchaikovsky, Beethoven and Brahms among others. We had learned what the conductor does, which is the biggest section in the orchestra and found out which instruments played the music as Harry Potter’s Nimbus 2000 zipped around in the film. Most importantly though, we’d enjoyed the music and had lots of fun along the way.

The next CBSO family concert is in Birmingham’s Town Hall on Sunday 2nd February at 2.30pm. It’s called ‘We Got Rhythm’ and it all about the orchestra’s percussion instruments. It is bound to be noisy and fun plus this concert also offers a chance to get hands on. 

https://cbso.co.uk/event/we-got-rhythm.  Tickets are £12 each or £38 for 4.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review of Gangsta Granny by Heartbreak Productions.

In 10 years time, my children won’t specifically remember the occasions that I picked them up from school, cooked our favourite pasta dish or watched their swimming lesson. But they will remember some of things that we did that were out of the ordinary. They will remember some of the memories that we made together. As we headed out of the door on Friday evening, I knew we were making memories. I was just hoping it wasn’t going to be because the whole family had got soaked to the skin sitting in a park on a Friday night watching a play. We had a flask full of hot chocolate, a box of malteasers and some large umbrellas borrowed from a neighbour. We were heading to a Heartbreak Productions outdoor show in Walsall Arboretum. It was pretty exciting heading out in the evening and walking through an empty park to get to the bandstand where the show was being staged. When I told Little Lady what we were going to see, she was extremely excited. In fact, we all were because ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ocean Odyssey in Times Square

Hitting New York as a family, we were full of excitement and anticipation. We were waiting outside a store for it to open at 9am! We took selfies and videos of the famous sites in Times Square. But soon after that legs were tired. Temperatures were rising and humidity was close to 50%. It was with a sigh of relief that we entered the cool of National Geographic Encounter. Little people will only walk so far and look at so many famous buildings. Ocean Odyssey is an immersive experience that uses the latest technology to take you under the ocean. Our expectations were high as we ‘took the dive’ to our first location- the shallows of the South Pacific. Fish swam under our feet and adults and children jumped around as the creatures interacted with us. Jellyfish responded as we moved our arms and got up close. We loved the fact that Ocean Odyssey isn’t a show that you sit back and watch but an experience that you can interact with. Those tired little legs suddenly weren’t tired anymore...
Post a Comment
Read more
I didn’t plan a six year age gap between my girls. Once Little Lady‘s first birthday had passed, it was time to try again for a second baby. I knew it was going to take a while because it had been a long road the first time. As I had packed away each set of baby clothes all clean and labelled with ages, I had prayed that I would be able to use them again. When I actually discovered that I was pregnant again for the second time, it was coming up to Little Lady’s sixth birthday. I was in a state of delighted shock and struggled to believe it could be true. I paid for a scan around seven weeks because I just needed to see that there was actually an embryo inside, growing and safely beating away. Thank goodness for my morning sickness confirming that it was all true! We had left the baby stage behind long ago. Now we were able to leave the house with just a set of keys in our pocket. We had envisaged having children close together, them playing with the same toys and being b...
Post a Comment
Read more