The Arts:An Oscar-winning animation film accompanied by the live music of Prokofiev, played by some of Ireland's finest young musicians - the Helix on January 1st sounds like the place to be, writes Arminta Wallace
'A GREAT FAMILY day out." That's what the general manager of the National Youth Orchestra of Ireland (NYOI), Zoe Keers, is promising for the first day of 2009; and, frankly, it's hard to disagree. At the Helix on New Year's Day at 3pm, there'll be a screening of the short film, Peter and the Wolf, with the junior orchestra performing Prokofiev's score by way of live accompaniment. And "live" is undoubtedly the word. The junior orchestra is a full-sized band of 12- to 18-year-olds from all over Ireland, all of whom will give up a week of their Christmas holidays to rehearse in a boarding school in Waterford. The film is an Oscar-winning animation which is both witty and exciting. The combination of all that energy will, surely, be explosive.
The story of Peter and the Wolfbegan in 1936, when Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev was commissioned to write a "new musical symphony" to cultivate "musical tastes in children from the first years of school". Prokofiev pulled the piece out of his musical hat in just four days. Since then it has been recorded by the world's poshest orchestras, not to mention a procession of celebrity narrators, among them Boris Karloff, Sting and Dame Edna Everage. In recent years a fresh new arrangement by Maurice Seezer's slightly jazzy band - with a wickedly funny narration by Gavin Friday, and drawings by Bono - has been raising money for the Irish Hospice Foundation.
How did this New Year's Day collaboration come about?
"We got a call from the Irish Film Institute, asking if we could supply one or two players for a screening," says the NYOI's Zoe Keers. "We were just putting together our programme for the Christmas session and it seemed like a terrific thing to do."
All the more so, perhaps, because the orchestra has been having a tough time of late. Its sponsorship deal with Toyota Ireland, which had been the envy of every arts organisation in the country, will finish at the end of the year, and in decidedly wobbly financial times, nobody really knows what's going to happen to the organisation.
To begin the year in such flamboyant musical fashion is, therefore, to make a statement of intent, to let everyone know that the NYOI is still very much alive and kicking.
"It's a real tonic," says Keers. "The movie is fantastic, and the concert will be a great family day out - which is important, particularly at the moment, from several points of view. Firstly, it keeps the kids interested. We've never done a project like this - performing a live film score - so it's something new and exciting and challenging for the junior players.
"Secondly, it appeals to a wider audience than a 'regular' concert might, so it gives the orchestra a bigger profile in the wider world."
PROFILES DON'T COMEmuch bigger than the Academy Awards, as the director of Peter and the Wolf, the English animator, Suzie Templeton, explains. "Winning this year's Oscar for best animated short film has made a big difference to the way in which the film is talked about," she says. "I hope it will just mean that more people will see it. And in particular, see it performed with live music, because that's by far the best way to see it."
She admits to having been surprised by this aspect of the project. "I didn't expect live music to make such a difference," she says. "But then live music is such a thrilling experience. You don't normally get a thrill from going to see a film; you go to chill out and relax. But at the premiere at the Royal Albert Hall, the atmosphere was electric."
Visually, Templeton's film couldn't look more different from the painfully cheesy Disney version which has been trotted out on children's telly schedules for as long as anyone can remember. Her Peter has the angsty eyes and attitude of a manga character; her wolf has a snarl that makes the hairs rise on the back of viewers' necks. As an accomplished exponent of the stop-start technique of animation - think Wallace and Gromitand you'll get the picture - you might expect that she'd begin with her own internal vision of how she wanted the film to look, and then somehow incorporate Prokofiev's music. Not so.
"It all came completely from the music," Templeton says. "And, actually, it was incredibly difficult. It took me two years to write, because I didn't want to impose anything on the score. I wanted the arc of the story to grow totally from the music, and work totally with it - but it's very, very complex, because each character within the story also has an arc."
For those who are interested in the intricate process of putting together a film such as this, Templeton's website offers some marvellously detailed exploration of the character- modelling, the set design and the animation itself. From a musical standpoint, however, the absence of the narrator is just as intriguing. "Well," she says, "that was inspired by the Pet Shop Boys actually."
She had almost finished her script for Peter and the Wolfwhen she happened on a free concert in London at which the Pet Shop Boys played alongside a screening of the film Battleship Potemkin. "I was just bowled over by the strength of it," she says. "The combination of silent film and live music was so powerful."
So it was goodbye script, hello conductor - because in this kind of live performance, it's the conductor who must synchronise what's going on musically with what's happening on the screen.
HAPPILY, INGearóid Grant, the NYOI has a conductor of boundless enthusiasm, who both relishes the anarchic energy of his young charges and is well able to keep them in check.
"He's a really good musician, and young people really take to him," says the leader of this year's junior orchestra, 17-year-old violinist Patrick Rafter. "He understands them and gets on with them, but he won't put up with any messing whatsoever. No way."
As for Rafter's own responsibilities as leader of the orchestra, does he prefer to lead by example or bash his fellow musicians into shape? "Bash them," is the prompt reply. "Only joking. When you're the leader, it sounds like a cliche, but you're there for a reason. You've to lead your section, and you've to be responsible."
Rafter, who has been playing in public since the age of six, has just returned from a visit to Japan and Korea with the senior orchestra from the Royal Irish Academy of Music. Nevertheless he describes playing with the NYOI as "probably one of the highlights of my musical life. I love it. What we do is, we have two long residential courses per year. We stay in Newtown School, down in Waterford, for a week at Christmas and for two weeks in late June and early July. We work hard, you know? We'd get in six or seven hours of orchestra - sometimes eight - a day. But there are loads of other activities as well, and you're with people your own age. So you'd never be bored."
It's a pretty safe bet that the same will go for the concert on New Year's Day.
•Peter and the Wolf is at the Helix on Jan 1 at 3pm, with live music from the NYOI Junior Orchestra. The NYOI Symphony (senior) Orchestra will also be in action over the Christmas period with concerts in Limerick (UCL, Jan 3, 8pm,) and Dublin (National Concert Hall, Jan 4, 8pm)
