Tarik Oregan A Celestial Map of the Sky Elder Phillips - Nmcd220 - Contemporary - by Nmc

Tarik O'Regan's title work A Celestial Map of the Sky, here performed by a children's and youth choir with the Hallé, is a vibrant composition with propulsive, syncopated rhythms contrasting darker moments of refl ection. The piece is inspired by two woodcuts engraved by German polymath Albrecht Dürer in 1515, which are amongst the oldest known printed European star charts of the northern and southern celestial hemispheres. A deep-rooted interest in North African traditional music, shaped in part by Tarik’s Algerian heritage, is integrated into two of the orchestral works on this album, which are infl uenced by and named after Algerian folk music forms: Raï and Chaâbi. First heard at the BBC Proms, Latent Manifest is an ingenious expansion of a single gesture from a Bach violin sonata, magnifi ed to create an entire universe of orchestral colour. To close the album, Fragments from Heart of Darkness is a compelling orchestral reworking of thematic material from O'Regan's chamber opera Heart of Darkness, and is based on the novel of the same name by Joseph Conrad. The bonus download-only track, Now fatal change, for countertenor and violin, is a reworking of material found in Chaâbi and is set to the same text by Nahum Tate that Purcell used for Tell me, some pitying angel. This is Tarik's fi rst album dedicated to his orchestral works.