Alex Ross on Jonny Greenwood’s classical work

Posted on January 29th, 2008.

In the latest issue of the New Yorker, Alex Ross writes about Jonny Greenwood’s most recent classical release, ‘Popcorn Superhet Receiver’, which recently premiered in the US and is also part of the score for ‘There Will Be Blood’.

“Popcorn Superhet Receiver,” an eighteen-minute work for thirty-four strings, is Greenwood’s most ambitious score to date. Although the composer has made self-effacing comments in interviews about his reluctance to tackle longer forms, he hardly comes off as a neophyte; the piece possesses a solid architectural shape, with slow-moving, darkly meditative passages framing a kinetic, rock-tinged midsection. The writing for strings is idiomatic and inventive; at one point, Greenwood devises a buzzing barrage of “Bartók pizzicato”—sharply plucked sounds from violins cradled like ukuleles. The one structurally shaky moment comes in the transition back to the opening material; the switch feels abrupt, as if a tempo-changing gesture has gone missing. [read it in full]

Alex Ross is New Yorker’s music critic and author of several Radiohead related articles. He also wrote the book ‘The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century‘, a cultural history of music since 1900, in which Radiohead get a (short) mention as well.

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