On Wednesday April 10^th, the Sala Radio hosts an unusual concert: under the baton of Christopher Warren Green, the Radio Chamber Orchestra will feature Anthony Culverwell as soloist in Gabriel Prokofiev's Concerto for DJ and Orchestra. The evening's programme is rounded off by the music of Sergei Prokofiev - "Petra and the Wolf", with Florin Piersic Jr. as narrator, and Symphony I op. 25 in D major "Clasica".

First of all, I'd like to know where the idea for a concert for turntables and orchestra came from?

It wasn't actually my idea, I was approached by a musician, Will Dutta, who was still a student at Trinity College of Music and needed to do a special project. He knew DJ Yoda from a festival and thought, "Wouldn't it be interesting, doing a turntable concert?" He knew my work and thought I'd be the right composer because I was interested in many genres of music and also had experience remixing classical music for my label, Nonclassical. So he asked me, and initially I declined, because I thought turntables had such a strong identity in hip-hop culture and I wasn't sure if they could be paired convincingly with an orchestra.

But I'm a fan of the art myself, and I knew it could be full of virtuosity and creativity. Then, after a few weeks of thinking about it, I realized that if I used the right sounds on the turntables, it could blend very well with the orchestra, but it was very important to use orchestra sounds, so that the turntables would be directly connected to the orchestra, to have an instrument that really engages with the orchestra.

So the music for the orchestra was also designed for turntables?

Yes - when I started composing, I started with some sketches, short phrases, I used the MIDI sounds of the orchestra and, taking these phrases, I would reverse them, to see what they sounded like when played backwards, something that turntables can do, and I imagined what turntables could do with these phrases. And then a lot of those phrases became part of the orchestral performance. Some of the sounds that the orchestra plays are very short, for example a brass chord; and then, in the third part, the orchestra members speak and the conductor coughs, sounds that are then used on the turntables, because I had, at one point, a meeting with DJ Yoda, the first performer of the work, he told me that it's very important to have sounds of the human voice on the turntables, because it can create very nice effects. But I had a rule that the sounds had to come from the orchestra, so I included a moment in the orchestra where the members talk to each other, one of them yawns, another one exhales, then the conductor coughs, and these three sounds are very suitable for the DJ to manipulate.

What do you think the audience should know before hearing the work in the concert hall? Also, do you think this is a piece only suitable for the concert hall? Can it be played elsewhere?

The audience doesn't need to know anything, but if they can understand how the turntables work, I think they would enjoy the performance more, because a lot of people don't know how this system works, it's a mystery to them, they just see someone moving their hands really fast and they don't know exactly what that person is doing. One hand controls the actual speed of the recording and the other controls the rhythm and volume of the sound. So you need to understand what the two hands are doing. If possible, it's good for the audience to see a short example, to understand how it works - in that case, they're less confused about what's happening on stage. But as a musical work, they can listen to it and enjoy it even without seeing the concert, so no, it doesn't have to be explained.

I think it works very well in a concert hall, because the acoustics here are obviously designed to make the orchestra sound very good, and also in a concert hall we are used to seeing concerts for violin, for piano, for cello, and my idea was to write a traditional concert but for this very different instrument. So it's a lot of fun to bring the turntables, an instrument that originated in nightclubs and bars, to the concert hall stage. I like this kind of change of scenery and break with tradition. But it can also be played in other places - it's been played in a huge club in London, it's been played at an outdoor festival. The main problem is that you take the orchestra out of the concert hall and sometimes the sound of the orchestra is not as good.

This work will be performed on April 10^th at the Sala Radio, along with two works by your grandfather Sergei Prokofiev - it's Petra and the Wolf and Symphony I. How do you see your grandfather's works as a composer? Can you see them only as a composer?

It's interesting - it's about my grandfather and I grew up listening to his music.

My father often took me to concerts of his music in London, where I grew up, so I know his music very well, I have a special relationship with it, I feel at home listening to it.So I like a lot of composers, but his music has an even more personal element.I also admire it very much, as a composer, I like his approach, the fact that he was dedicated to melody even in the middle of the 20th century, when many composers as early as the 30s and 40s were moving away from melody, trying new approaches.But he continued to write melodic music - and yet his music was always modern and exciting. I love the way he feels rhythm and orchestration - I'm a big fan of his music.It's very close to me.

I understand that you started out writing pop music, and continued with electroacoustic music as an undergraduate - how did you start writing classical music?

At first, my first compositional experiences were with pop music, and that's because my parents didn't force me to do music, they knew that my father grew up in a kind of shadow of his famous father - my father was a painter and sculptor, a visual artist, but he didn't want us to feel pressured. I had a friend who wrote pop songs and I started doing that with him and I thought it was fun - it was a great way for me to discover songwriting in a way that wasn't connected to my grandfather.

In doing so, I discovered my love for music in an independent way.

I think if I had started with classical music, I might have been intimidated by my grandfather's success. Once I had written enough songs, I tried writing classical music and found I really enjoyed it. I prefer classical music because you're not constrained by the commercial constraints of pop music - and pop music tends to stay in the area of certain genres and styles of the field. I also believe more in the older classical music approach, which was more open to influences from popular or folk culture. If you look at composers of the past, they often used the forms of folk dances in their time, whether it was waltz, minuet, mazurka, polka, polonaise, sarabande... all of these forms were just the folk music of that time. But now, in the last 80 years or so, composers have somehow felt that classical music is a separate art, that it should not be linked to popular culture, which I think is a mistake. I really like to draw inspiration from the culture I am surrounded by. If musicians are aware of things other than classical music, it's very good for what they are practicing, because it gives them many sources of inspiration and many languages to draw from.