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Extra Time
for Symphony Orchestra Extra Time is a celebration of sport and its ability to create a rousing collective experience for its spectators. Composed after the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, it quotes numerous musical themes that are associated with sports TV programmes. The piece aims to capture the various moods of attending a sports match: joy, passion, tension and humour, all combined in a jazzy musical mixture. |
The piece was composed for the Last Night of the Proms 2024, where it was premiered on 14th September 2024 at the Royal Albert Hall, London, by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sakari Oramo
Instrumentation: piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, harp, drum kit, percussion, strings.
Duration: 4'30 mins
Listen to a performance here: Extra Time (4'27)
Instrumentation: piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, harp, drum kit, percussion, strings.
Duration: 4'30 mins
Listen to a performance here: Extra Time (4'27)
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List of themes used:
Match of the Day
Wimbledon (Light and Tuneful)
Cricket Theme (Soul Limbo)
Ski Sunday (Pop Looks Bach)
Horse of the Year Show (Mozart's Musical Joke)
Pot Black (Black and White Rag)
London Marathon (The Trap theme)
Chariots of Fire
Some reviews of the work:
The Times: Sports lovers were well served by two novelties. Charles Ives's 1898 cacophony the Yale-Princeton Football Game still sounds daringly avant-garde but was upstaged by Iain Farrington's newly commissioned Extra Time, which ingeniously riffed on theme tunes from TV sports programmes. It was ebulliently played by the on-form BBC Symphony Orchestra under its principal conductor, Sakari Oramo.
The Telegraph: Iain Farrington's Extra Time was a brilliant mash-up of TV sports themes.
The Guardian: Iain Farrington's Extra Time was a mash-up of all the BBC's sports theme tunes: a fluffy but inspired bit of Last Night silliness that had the BBC Symphony Chorus starting a huge Mexican wave.
Financial Times: Iain Farrington’s Extra Time, getting its premiere, hit the spot by putting together a medley of theme tunes from TV sports programmes.
Classical Source: More high-octane musical fun opened the second half, with Iain Farrington’s Extra Time a brilliant mash-up of BBC sports theme tunes, starting with Match of the Day and including Horse of the Year Show, Test Match Special and Wimbledon (here the extreme right and left members of the BBC Symphony Chorus producing tennis rackets and aped volleys between them across the Hall). As it all came to an Ivesian musical car crash, Farrington himself, donned in yellow T-shirt and with yellow card, entered at the back and tried to control the brass. Only Oramo showing a red card brought the work to a close. Perfect Last Night fare, brilliantly done.