The Bunny and I in the Times

Spare Times: For Children
By LAUREL GRAEBER


THE PREMIERE OF ‘GOODNIGHT MOON,' WITH ‘THE RUNAWAY BUNNY'

A beloved bedtime story for generations of children, "Goodnight Moon" unfolds in "a great green room." So it seems fitting that the tale will come to life on Sunday in a place New Yorkers might consider the greatest, greenest room of all: Central Park.

The park is the setting for the premiere of Glen Roven's "Goodnight Moon, a Lullaby for Piano and Orchestra," his musical reimagining of Margaret Wise Brown's 1947 book in which everything from a tiny mouse to the distant stars receives its own affectionate evening farewell. The young musicians of the Interschool Symphony, the most advanced division of the InterSchool Orchestras of New York, will play the 10-minute piece, part of a Mother's Day concert also featuring "The Runaway Bunny: A Concerto for Reader, Violin and Orchestra," Mr. Roven's 20-minute interpretation of a 1942Brown book. (The program, lasting slightly over an hour, will include a "play-along" of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy"; audience members are encouraged to bring their own instruments.)

Mr. Roven structured his pieces differently because " ‘Goodnight Moon' is really a direct narrative between a parent and a child," he said. "I really wanted the parent to sing the child to sleep." He conceived "The Runaway Bunny" as more like "Peter and the Wolf." "I thought I'd have the bunny's adventures musicalized," he said, choosing episodes in which the bunny announces its intentions to flee - as a fish, as a mountain rock, as a trapeze artist.

For "Goodnight Moon," "I set every word," he said, "all 300 of them," using his orchestral writing to mimic the tale's atmosphere. At the end, he said, "the house disappears, and the kid's kind of floating in the universe, talking to the clouds and the air."

The stories' allure has attracted adult luminaries: the soprano Lauren Flanigan, for whom "Goodnight Moon" was written, will sing it, and the actress Kate Mulgrew will read "The Runaway Bunny." The absent star is Brown herself (1910-52), whose brief life Mr. Roven will commemorate by releasing a live recording of the park performances on his new GPR record label on May 23, her 100th birthday. (Above, Adrian Benepe, the city parks commissioner, introducing last year's InterSchool concert.)

Those who miss "Goodnight Moon" in Central Park can hear it on May 19 under very different circumstances: Mark Stone will sing it in Carnegie Hall. "This has to be for daddies too," Mr. Roven said. "So I have a baritone version."

(Instrument "petting zoo" at 2:30 p.m.; concert at 3:30; the Bandshell, midpark at 70th Street, 212-410-0370, isorch.org; free.) LAUREL GRAEBER