Score 0-571-52204-1 on sale, parts for hire

This was my first piece for the BBC Concert Orchestra, and it’s coloured by my childhood: as a kid, the family car only ever had the same four cassettes in it. These were: the songs of Simon and Garfunkel (though bizarrely not sung by them); Mozart’s horn concertos; and two musicals: Flower Drum Song and My Fair Lady. (This isn’t a claim of any kind of deprivation – there were other records at home – that’s just how things were.) On long journeys, when the family refused to hear them yet again, I used to listen to the engine noise, and found that if I concentrated hard enough I could hear the music from the cassettes still playing in the background. I’d do this for hours, until I could nearly hear every detail fighting to be heard through the drone of the car. And it was thoughts of background noise, and radios, that got me started writing this first BBC Concert Orchestra commission. © Jonny Greenwood