The Celestial Stranger – Stephen McNeff’s new song cycle for tenor and orchestra receives its World Premiere with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales at the BBC Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff on Thursday May 16 with tenor Gavan Ring, conducted by Joana Carneiro.
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 which 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." Drawing on other poets including Walt Whitman and Dylan Thomas, the cycle describes a broad narrative arc. Co-commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and RTE.
