Bizet: Jeux d'enfants

Introduction

eux d'enfants ("Children's Games") Op. 22, is a suite of twelve miniatures composed by Georges Bizet for piano four hands in 1871. The entire piece has a duration of about 23 minutes. The movement titles are as follows:

1. L'escarpolette (The swing)
2. La toupie (The top)
3. La poupée (The doll)
4. Les chevaux de bois (The hobby-horses)
5. Le volant (Battledore and shuttlecock)
6. Trompette et tambour (Trumpet and drum)
7. Les bulles de savon (Soap bubbles)
8. Les quatre coins (Puss in the corner)
9. Colin-maillard (Blind Man's Bluff)
10. Saute-mouton (Leap-frog)
11. Petit mari, petite femme (Little husband, little wife)
12. Le bal (The ball)

Bizet orchestrated five of these (Nos. 6, 3, 2, 11, 12) as the Petite Suite. The remaining movements were later orchestrated by Roy Douglas (5 numbers) and Hershy Kay (2 numbers) and the complete orchestral suite has been recorded as Jeux d'enfants. Bizet himself made an orchestral version of No. 8 which he did not include in the suite. It has been recorded by Michel Plasson.

Sigfrid Karg-Elert wrote his orchestral suite after Bizet's Jeux d'enfants, Op. 21, in 1902.

In 1955, George Balanchine choreographed the entire suite as the ballet Jeux d'enfants. In 1975 he made a new ballet, The Steadfast Tin Soldier, using only four of the movements.^{[citation needed]}

A version for woodwind quintet of the final movement, "Le Bal," is the opening and closing theme music for the long-running syndicated Weekend Radio show, carried on many public radio stations.