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BBC Four presents Scrapheap Orchestra

Fri 2nd December 2011
First orchestra made entirely from junk
BBC Four will air a 90-minute documentary on Sunday, December 11 (9.30pm GMT),
following the quest to build an orchestra of 44 instruments entirely from scrap in 11 weeks.
Conductor Charles Hazlewood challenged top instrument makers from around the UK
with the task of turning broken furniture and the contents of road-side skips into musical instruments.
Hazlewood and the BBC Concert Orchestra performed Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture
on the scrap instruments at this year's BBC Proms.
I wonder how it sounds??!

Awesome!

I have just been watching this on BBC iPlayer. Amazing and quite impressive tuba made by Andy Taylor playing the 1812 Overture at the BBC Proms.

It seems as though some cheating is going on. Those trombone slides sure don't look like the product of Junkyard Wars. And neither do the valves used for the tuba. If they are going to build instruments from junk, they ought to go all the way.

Rick "lack of commitment, tsk tsk tsk" Denney

Rick Denney wrote:It seems as though some cheating is going on. Those trombone slides sure don't look like the product of Junkyard Wars. And neither do the valves used for the tuba. If they are going to build instruments from junk, they ought to go all the way.

Rick "lack of commitment, tsk tsk tsk" Denney

Yes, the string and woodwind instruments really did seem to be made entirely from junk with such as the keys on clarinet made from cutlery and the violin bodies from drainage pipes- but all the brass appeared to use 'normal' valve sets with just the outer pipes and bell made from junk - rather cheating I thought too

Listening to a recording of the 1812 Overture by the scrap orchestra:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J10x3MoydyA

The balance between the strings in the opening sounds different from what I am used to, but it doesn’t sound wrong.

The solo oboe sounds like the "French" playing style known when I was young (as opposed to the fuller, but less flexible, German style).

The loud passages sound brass heavy.

The bass drums reminds me of the big and shallow older German ones of my childhood.

Klaus