I'm looking for suggestions of pieces containing strong musical contrasts. The contrasts should ideally be clear and obvious (I'll be playing the music to primary-aged children) and the pieces ideally quite short (or a specified section of a larger work). The contrasts themselves could be pretty much anything: dynamics, instrumentation, tempo, texture, etc.

Thank you!

I used to use the Carnival of the Animals, but contrast two different pieces, like tortoises and wild asses for tempo, or the Lion and the Cuckoo for dynamics, or the elephant and the aviary for pitch; this was with year 1, though. How old are yours?

My favourite trick with them was to have them choose one each out of loud or soft, high or low, smooth or jumpy, fast or slow (you can sing that to the tune of Little Brown Jug!) and then play a simple tune of their choice using those qualities on the keyboard. Then I'd do it again, changing only one element, and ask them what had changed. Then I'd ask them for another set of qualities (it needn't be all four, just three works OK) and play a piece which complied with all but one, and have them tell me what I was getting wrong, without having heard it the way they'd asked first. It was impressive how many children in year 1 could tell me correctly!

When I did contrasts in secondary school I used Suppe's Light Cavalry Overture, and they listened to it in detail to find more subtle contrasts, even as far as time-signature, one or many, left and right. But I think this might need too much concentration for primary

Thanks, Linda. I use CotA quite a lot, but I really wanted to contrasts to be within a piece, and not too subtle.

In that case: Sabre dance!

(Or some parts of Scheherazade

To show off the different sections of the orchestra, the third movement of Chaikovsky's 4th symphony: a longish chunk of pizzicato strings, then the wind section with a different tune, then the brass with yet more new material, and then shorter and shorter sections until towards the end we get e.g. the wind tune shared between strings and wind with something like half a bar each.

Any scherzo with a slow trio. Beethoven's 7th symphony has one such. Brahms Horn Trio has another.. The last of Britten's "Four Sea Interludes" has the same fast-slow-fast pattern.

How about the scherzo and link into last movement of Beethoven 5?

Or Confutatis Maledictis from Mozart's Requiem?

That's fun to sing! And dramatic contrast between the men and ladies in teh choir and associated orchestration.

Or the last few bars of the second movement of the piano concerto number 5, leading straight into the more frenetic third movement. Same melody, but what a contrast!

Thanks for all the suggestions so far.

Prokofieff's Romeo & Juliet? Lots of contrasts in a small space of time.

Coppelia? I think it was Delibes who orchestrated it.

A lot of ballet music has quite strong contrasts - it's needed to help create the dramatic effect.