If you have played any musical instrument at all, you may have imagined how wonderful it would be to be playing in an ensemble, while knowing that you would never be good enough to do so. The Portsmouth Sinfonia was created in 1970 to meet such a need and was open to anyone who wanted to play. But while expertise was not required, attendance at rehearsals was mandatory and orchestra members were expected to take it seriously and give it their best shot.

The orchestra spokesperson Robin Mortimore told Rolling Stone that they played as well as they could and did not intend to caricature professional orchestras. Bryars said the notion that members were required to be novices was a “scurrilous rumour” spread by the BBC. [Brian] Eno said the orchestra included a mixture of skilled and unskilled players, which created “a very blurry version, a soft-focus version, of classical music” and “produced some beautiful music … There were some exquisite moments — the mixture of chance and choice.” Nyman described the orchestra as avant-garde and found it moving and exciting. He argued that the music was profound and subversive, and that the members were serious artists and experimental musicians, not deliberately incompetent. He said “the combination of everybody’s individual errors built a musical structure that was incomparable”.
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On 28 May 1974, by which point they had 82 members, the orchestra performed a sell-out concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London. They were joined by an accomplished pianist, Sally Binding, who transposed Piano Concerto No. 1 to A minor as the orchestra was “unnerved” by sharps and flats. In 1979, the Portsmouth Sinfonia released the album 20 Classic Rock Classics, inspired by the Classic Rock series of albums by the London Symphony Orchestra. That year, they performed at the Rainbow Theatre, London. They last performed in 1979. Prompted by the 1981 album Hooked on Classics by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Portsmouth Sinfonia released a single, “Classical Muddly”, that reached number 38 on the UK singles chart in 1981. Plans for the BBC to broadcast a film about the Portsmouth Sinfonia in 1994 were cancelled as the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra feared the public might confuse the orchestras.

Here they are with the fanfare of the tone poem Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss, which I am sure that everyone has heard, at least from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I wish I had been able to play with them. I would have fit in so well.