Making Classical Music Kid’s Stuff : Recordings: A spate of new releases is designed to take the music ‘out of its black clothes and have it speak naturally to children,’ says the creator of the Classical Kids label.

What do Beethoven and Barney have in common, besides a first initial? Youth appeal. An offshoot of the children’s music boom has more audio and video recordings designed to demystify classical music and make it user-friendly for infants, young children, teens and parents.

In addition to Leonard Bernstein’s acclaimed “Young People’s Concerts,” now being released on video by Sony Classical through the Leonard Bernstein Society and the Smithsonian Institution, a diverse selection can be found on other labels.

“Beethoven Lives Upstairs,” the first video from Classical Kids/Children’s Group/BMG, is a fictional dramatization of the composer’s last years. It aired this year on HBO and garnered a 1993 Emmy for best children’s program (in a tie with Disney’s “Avonlea”).

“Probably the strength of the series is the appreciation of parents,” said Classical Kids creator, Canadian pianist Susan Hammond. “Because they find that, lo and behold, they like this music and they are discovering something meaningful in the words. If you are not condescending to kids you will not be condescending to adults.”

According to Hammond, the series, originally audio only, was designed to “take classical music out of its black clothes and have it speak naturally to children.”

Hammond begins with a musical spine, then builds a fictional story around the lives of a single composer. She features children as main characters and “sweeps up a whole era,” capturing time and place to give the work a cultural context. Musical excerpts provide color and texture.

Bach, Mozart and Vivaldi have received Hammond’s treatment. Her newest recording to be available on video is “Tchaikovsky Discovers America,” based on the composer’s 1891 trip to this country. In it, Tchaikovsky is on a train in the company of two young children as he begins work on “The Nutcracker.”

“Tchaikovsky actually was composing ‘Nutcracker’ while he was in the United States,” Hammond said. “I’m trying to show that a composer draws on everyday life for inspiration.”

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Northern California pianist Ric Louchard takes a different tack to involve young listeners. “G’night Wolfgang,” “G’morning Johann” and “Hey, Ludwig,” his recordings on the Music for Little People label, are instrumental programs for family listening, meant to become “part of the environment.”

“A lot of people are intimidated by classical music,” Louchard said. “They feel somehow lessened if they don’t know anything about it. One of my ideas was to have this music become familiar to kids so they would feel it was theirs, that they owned it.”

Louchard’s series includes works by such composers as Bach, Mozart, Haydn--and Scott Joplin, because “I love the music and I wanted to make it clear that I feel it is part of the repertoire, too.”

Louchard plays “real, unedited music. I don’t do any arrangement to make the music more approachable by children. I don’t think that’s necessary. I just imagine an environment where the tape or CD will be played and try to find a program that will work.”

Children shouldn’t be “sat down in front of a speaker and told to listen.” The music should be a natural part of their daily lives, “ambient sounds,” something to enrich play time or rest time.

At the higher end of the budget scale are interactive, holiday “deluxe gift editions” of Tchaikovsky’s “The Sleeping Beauty” and “The Nutcracker,” featuring Leonard Slatkin and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, from BMG Classics/RCA Victor Red Seal.

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The boxed sets include vivid character die-cuts and fold-out scenery, plus softcover books aimed at young people describing plot, music and instruments.

“These are two recordings that we wanted to get out to a wider audience,” said marketing manager Robert Bourne. “We thought that by giving kids something to play with and relate to while they listen, we could give them a sense of the whole thing, and hold their attention more than if they just heard the music.”

The recordings are part of the labels’ “ongoing focus” in introducing classical music “to people who have never listened.” They join a “Greatest Hits” series and the next “step up,” the “Basic 100” series featuring a “more serious basic repertoire.”

Two book-and-tape sets from Golden Entertainment, a division of Western Publishing Co., star Big Bird, Herry Monster and other “Sesame Street” notables, and give children “a simple, fun introduction to classical music,” said Dave Van Deusen, senior product manager.

That’s the philosophy, he said, behind Golden’s recent inclusion of “Big Bird Meets the Orchestra” and “Scheherryzade and the Arabian Nights” on its “Learn About Music Series.”

“It’s like reading. We try to get children interested in reading through simple storybooks they love. You don’t hand them ‘Beowulf’ and say start reading. We’ve also tried to incorporate something for the parents, because our more successful children’s products are things that parents like to listen to.

“Classical music, people sometimes see as standoffish or inaccessible,” he said. “It doesn’t need to be. It can be fun if children are given exposure to it at a young age in a fun way.”