Jonny Greenwood's Popcorn Superhet Receiver has its premiere

The BBC Concert Orchestra gives the world premiere of Jonny Greenwood's Popcorn Superhet Receiver tonight at 7.30pm at LSO St Luke's, the London Symphony Orchestra's converted church on Old Street, with Robert Ziegler conducting. It is a BBC Radio 3 commission and the first work Greenwood has written as the orchestra's composer in residence, a post he took up last May. Tonight's concert opens a three-year partnership.

The piece began with the noise of a car engine. In his programme note Greenwood goes back to long family journeys as a child, when by listening hard he could hear the cassette music still playing behind the engine, and thoughts of background noise and radios got him started. He wrote it for 18 violins, six violas, six cellos and four double basses, and it lasts about 18 minutes.

He talked it through on Radio 4's Front Row last night, and part of it was played. He remembered some embarrassing moments in rehearsal at Maida Vale, when something sounded plainly wrong, and explained the ondes Martenot by way of the Star Trek theme.

Newsnight showed rehearsal footage last night too. In one viewer's account, the orchestra made noises that seemed random despite the conductor, while Greenwood sat on the floor hunched over a notepad, writing fast. The programme's reviewers, who had spent a few hours at rehearsals, admitted the music was beyond them, but they were plainly taken with the way he built a sound like a siren and resolved it into something calm.

The programme, as announced