On January 31, the orchestral song cycle The Celestial Stranger by Irish composer Stephen McNeff will receive its Irish premiere, performed by the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland and tenor soloist Gavan Ring. Colombian-American conductor Lina Gonzalez-Granados will lead the performance, in a programme which opens with Debussy’s languorous Prélude à l’Après-midi d’une Faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun), a significant work in McNeff's life and one which turned him towards classical music as a youngster.

The Celestial Stranger was inspired by the rediscovery in 1997 in the library of Lambeth Palace in London of texts by the Seventeenth Century cleric and mystic, Thomas Traherne. In these Traherne imagines a person from another world discovering earth and being enchanted by its beauty: “this little star, so wide and so full of mysteries." In this cycle of songs our Stranger goes on to marvel at natural wonders and recounts how their brother imagines that in jumping over a stream in the moonlight he falls into a reverse world and ‘leaps over the moon’. Drawing on other poets like Walt Whitman and Dylan Thomas, the cycle describes a broad narrative arc. In 'As Time Draws Nigh'', the realities of the earth wake the Stranger up to the warlike industrialisation of society, and the prophetic fear of a totalitarian regime are expressed in 'The Hand that Signed the Paper’. Understanding the imperfections of the word, our traveller takes their regretful leave – perhaps one day to return.

Find out more about the programme and get your tickets here.

More Info

Follow us on facebook

Follow us on twitter

Follow us on instagram

Follow us on youtube