The tradition of writing short programmatic piano pieces for children, more or less invented by Schumann in his Kinderszenen of 1836, is among the most enduring traditions of Western music, having survived every change of style and fashion over the years. The twelve piano pieces by Marjorie Helyer in The Greenwood Tree are conceived in the mood of Schumann, translated perhaps to an English landscape, with haymakers, dragonflies, the merry cricket, the silver birch, the rabbit’s playtime and the ...