O'Regan: A Celestial Map of the Sky

Tarik O'Regan's title work A Celestial Map of the Sky, here performed by a children's choir with the Halle, is a vibrant work with propulsive, syncopated rhythms contrasting darker moments of reflection. The work is inspired by two woodcuts engraved by German polymath Albrecht Durer in 1510 that 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 shapes two of the orchestral works on this album. Rai and Chaabi are not ethnographic studies but are influenced by Algerian folk music forms. Latent Manifest is an ingenious expansion of a single gesture from a Bach sonata, magnified to create an entire universe of orchestral color. To close the album, Fragments from Heart of Darkness draws on the music from O'Regan's chamber operas Heart of Darkness, based on the novel of the same name by Joseph Conrad.