the times | Tuesday October 20 2020 2GM 3
News
Socially distanced classical music per-
formances have altered how orchestras
sound, giving extra prominence to
the contributions of individual players,
according to the controller of BBC
Radio 3.
Alan Davey said he had noticed a
change since the BBC started organis-
ing coronavirus-safe concerts with
musicians at least two metres apart.
Since the nationwide lockdown was
eased over the summer, events have
been staged at venues including
Wigmore Hall in central London with-
out a live audience.
An empty Royal Albert Hall played
host to a socially distant and pared-
down version of the BBC Symphony
Orchestra for the Last Night of the
Proms in September.
“What we’ve found in live concerts so
far is that distancing is giving an
interesting new texture to the orches-
It is not only couples and wedding
photographers who have been attract-
ed to the railway in Britain this summer,
however. Another image released by
Network Rail shows a woman taking
part in what appears to be a fashion
shoot on a line between Cardiff and
Swansea. A professional photographer,
complete with a light reflector, takes
her photograph as she walks and sits on
the tracks at the Trenos level crossing
near Llanharan, where trains travel at
up to 85mph.
Allan Spence, head of passenger and
public safety at Network Rail, which
maintains and operates the 20,000-
mile network, said that information
campaigns about the dangers of tres-
passing on the line appeared to be get-
ting through to children but not adults.The newlyweds in North Yorkshire are being sought by the police. Other
risky shots include a Minnesota shark tank and a cliff in New Hampshire“Our ‘you v train’ campaign
has been really successful getting
the message to young people but
adults still aren’t taking heed,” he
said. “Wedding photos or selfies
on the track are just plain stupidi-
ty. We often warn families at this
time of year as kids enjoy school
half-term holidays. But this time
we are appealing to adults in parti-
cular. Please, make sure you know the
rail safety basics and pass that know-
ledge onto your loved ones. Lead by
example and stay off the tracks.”
Trespass incidents had been on the
decline in recent years but rose in the
summer. The 1,239 incidents in Sep-
tember marked a rise of 17 per cent
compared with the same point last year.
Superintendent Alison Evans, fromBritish Transport Police, said: “The rail-
way is not an appropriate or safe setting
for a photographic backdrop, no matter
how scenic the setting.”
Ian Prosser, the chief inspector of
railways, said: “We keep seeing people
take unnecessary risks around the rail-
way and this behaviour could result in
fatal or life-changing consequences.
These new statistics showing the
increase is truly worrying.”h
BBBrBBitititiiiiishhhh TTTransportPolicesaid:“The il
Crazy in love
6 After their wedding April Choi and
Bethany Byrnes, professional fire
performers from Iowa, set fire to
their dresses while wearing them.6 Melissa Kornexl hung 400ft above
the ground, held up only by her new
husband James’s hand — or so it
appeared. The couple cut holes in
their outfit to conceal harnesses and
ropes for the photographs at
Cathedral Ledge, New Hampshire.6 Niels and Agne Vollaard met at a
climbing wall in Edinburgh and
dreamt of getting married on top of
the Inaccessible Pinnacle, a 50m
fin of rock on Skye. After realising
that this was impossible, they
settled for 21 photographs in the
Seychelles, Dolomites and other
beauty spots in their wedding
clothes, some a year before the
ceremony took place.NETWORK RAIL/PA; JAY PHILBRICK/CATERS NEWS/JIM MONE/APA train is hardly out of place on a
railway line. It is, however, when it is
made of white fabric and attached to
the back of a wedding dress.
Network Rail has criticised the “plain
stupidity” of a pair of newlyweds who
decided to get their post-ceremony pho-
tographs taken on a set of live tracks.
The bride and groom posed near
Whitby, North Yorkshire, renewing
fears that social media is behind a surge
in people trespassing on the railways.
Between June and last month people
illegally went on to lines 5,100 times,
according to figures from Network Rail,
the equivalent of 42 incidents a day.
Last month 1,239 cases were recorded
alone, the worst September in five years.
People are believed to have been us-
ing the railway as a backdrop for social
media posts and wedding photographs
during the lockdown while reduced
services were operating. They risk
death or injury or at best a £1,000 fine.
In July Ellis Hollins, 20, an actor from
the Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks, apolo-
gised after posting photographs on
social media of a professional shoot on
a railway line. He admitted that he had
been irresponsible.
The images of the newlyweds
released by Network Rail yesterday
appeared to have been captured at a
pedestrian level crossing just outside an
unnamed station near Whitby in July.
The image, from a CCTV camera at the
station, shows the bride wearing a gown
with a long train held by a bridesmaid at
the side of the line. The Times under-
stands that the couple have yet to be
identified by British Transport Police.
The incident reflects a heightened
demand for wedding photographs that
allow brides and grooms to stand out on
social media. Residents near a cliff in
Sydney where a 21-year-old woman
from Lincolnshire fell to her death in
January while posing for a photograph
have also warned of couples sneaking
over the perimeter fence for extreme
wedding photographs. The white cliffs
of Beachy Head and Birling Gap in East
Sussex have become so popular that the
authorities have told people not to pose
on the crumbling and unstable chalk.
Newlyweds posing on
a live railway line are
dicing with danger,
write Graeme Paton
and Emma Yeomans
Here comes the bride... and the 09.
Distanced orchestras sound different
tral sound, and that individual players’
contributions are highlighted,” Mr
Davey said. “Even if an audience isn’t in
the room, the sense of a broadcast audi-
ence listening far and wide is profound.”
He told Radio Times that the aural
transformations of lockdown could
help the BBC to reimagine how it
thought about classical music after the
pandemic had passed.
He said: “This could be a clue to some
of the things that might be different in
the future, with our orchestras being
seen much more as a community of
talented players, each of whom brings
something individual to collective
music-making.
“To do that we all need to work
together to ensure musicians can sur-
vive and practise their life-enhancing
art. To paraphrase Churchill, speaking
about culture during the Second World
War, if we do not fight to defend it, what
are we doing at all?”
In an opinion article for the maga-zine, Mr Davey said that the BBC had a
responsibility to help to ensure that
“the light of music burns bright in the
dark months ahead”.
In addition to recording socially dis-
tanced live performances, the national
broadcaster’s orchestras and choirs
have delivered more than 350 virtual
music workshops to key workers and
vulnerable children.
Radio 3 paid freelance musicians to
make home recordings at the start of
lockdown and has commissioned 50
“Postcards from Composers”, short
works for solo instruments reflecting
on the impact of the virus.
Mr Davey said: “Basically, we’ve
been trying to employ people to play
live music that we broadcast in
whatever way we can.
“It’s a big commitment, but one we
have to make if we’re to ensure that the
music — and the musicians who play
and compose it — will still be here
when this pandemic is over.”Matthew Moore Media Correspondent
Some people are still seeking to find a
decent phone signal on Earth. Nasa,
though, plans to install the first cellular
network on the moon.
The US space agency has selected
Nokia’s Bell Labs, part of the Finnish
telecoms group, to help build the wire-
less communication system. The plans
form part of the Artemis project, which
aims to get the first woman or next man
on to the moon by 2024, before setting
up a permanent presence and then
eventually sending astronauts to Mars.
The network will be deployed on the
lunar surface in late 2022. Nokia will
use Intuitive Machines, a Texas space-
craft design company, to deliver its kit
to the moon.
Nokia said the network would con-
figure itself and establish a 4G commu-Lift-off for Nasa project to
fit phone network on moon
nications system based on the techno-
logy used on Earth for the past decade.
The system will be designed to be “ul-
tra-compact, low-power, space-hard-
ened” to withstand extreme conditions.
Britain’s space agency recently joined
an international group led by Nasa in
signing accords governing the explora-
tion of the moon.
Sue Horne, head of exploration at the
UK Space Agency, said Nokia’s net-
work would allow astronauts to com-
municate with one another across the
surface of the moon and also for equip-
ment to “talk” to other pieces.
Jim Geach, a professor at the Centre
for Astrophysics Research at the Uni-
versity of Hertfordshire, said that the
system would help the longer term goal
of putting humans on the moon in “the
same way we have on the international
space station”.Alex Ralph