Come and Meet the Instruments of the Orchestra!

How can the orchestra make so many different sounds? It is quiet and gentle, loud and piercing, funny, powerful, beautiful, frightening – and many other things besides. Composers for hundreds of years have used the same instruments in a whole variety of ways.

Which instrument belongs in which section of the orchestra? Does a violin really have a belly? What exactly is an ondes martenot? And what do these instruments do when they venture outside the orchestra?

With your guiding star, Evelyn Glennie, you too can become an expert. You'll even know your heckelphone from your sackbut and your tom-tom from your tam-tam – all by spending hours of fun with words, pictures and music, in the book and on the interactive CD-ROM.