On 21 February Marzena Diakun conducts the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin in Jonny Greenwood’s Popcorn Superhet Receiver for string orchestra at the Haus des Rundfunks. The programme, which features music by Krzysztof Penderecki – a key musical touchstone for Greenwood – and Bryce Dessner – another guitarist-turned-composer – is a special live edition of radioeins show Schöne Töne, presented by Sven Helbig.

Popcorn Superhet Receiver (2005), commissioned by BBC Radio 3, was Greenwood’s first large-scale work, and germinates many of the stylistic and harmonic features found in 48 Responses to Polymorphia and his violin concerto Horror Vacui; indeed sections from it were later reworked for his celebrated score to his score to Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. The 18-minute work for 34 strings, cast in four parts, is crafted from luscious swells of strings and unsettling dissonances, indicating the key influence of Penderecki's on Greenwood’s work. It is inspired by Greenwood’s recollections of background noise and mechanical drones from his childhood:

…as a kid, the family car only ever had the same four cassettes in it…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.

In addition to over 70 performances internationally, it has been recorded twice: by Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony and Edwin Outwater in 2011, and by AUKSO and Marek Mos in 2012, released on Nonesuch. Its exponents in the concert hall have included the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the CBSO, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Australian Chamber Orchestra, and BBC Philharmonic.

Popcorn Superhet Receiver is currently in rep at Royal Danish Ballet in Copenhagen as part of Am I doing it right?, choreographed by Carling Talcott-Steenstra for the triple-bill Koreorama no.2, the company’s new choreographic laboratory. The ballet, running until 6 March 2025, also uses music from Greenwood’s other large-scale string orchestra works 48 Responses to Polymorphia and selections from the score to There Will Be Blood. It is not its first appearance on the dance stage. In 2010 it was choreographed by Goyo Montero for El Sueño de la Razón, inspired by Goya, for Staatstheater Nuremberg; it was also basis of the Stephen Petronio Company’s 25th-anniversary show Ghost Town, which premiered at New York City’s Joyce Theatre in 2010.