I’m delighted to be returning to Music at New Malden together with my piano duet partner, Nigel Foster, and actress Julie Teal, for a fun programme of animal shenanigans!

We begin with the adventures of Babar, the little elephant. Written by Jean de Brunhoff, this was a very familiar tale told to children throughout the 20th century. In 1940, when French composer François Poulenc (1899-1963) was staying with friends, the children of the house, bored with his piano practice, placed a copy of their favourite book in front of him and asked him to compose music to accompany the story.  And so, Poulenc’s “L’histoire de Babar, le petit éléphant” came into being.

“The Carnival of the Animals” by Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) was composed in 1886, but he did not consider it to be a serious work and so only allowed private performances. Its public premiere was in 1922, a year after his death, and it quickly became one of his best-known works. In 1949, American poet Ogden Nash wrote a set of humorous verses to accompany each movement. They were originally narrated by Noël Coward on a Columbia Masterworks recording.