At the age of 19, the guitarist/composer Mike Oldfield could hardly have anticipated the enduring legacy of his debut album. Tubular Bells fused the instrumental rock style of Cream and Rick Wakeman with the experimental minimalism of Terry Riley. It also established the new label of Virgin Records as a home for innovative British artists in many genres. More than half a century on, the album has influenced countless musicians as one of the best-selling ever albums by a UK musician, selling 15 million copies worldwide.

Side A of the original album had a life of its own from the beginning, designated by Oldfield as ‘Opus One’. Marcel Bergmann traces influences of South American & Latin, Balinese, Irish, Celtic, rock and minimalist sources in the work. A conversation with Jeroen van Veen in 2005 was the catalyst for him to put his long-time love of the album at the service of a transcription for four pianos. This work branched into a separate version for pairs of pianos and synthesisers, which seemed to present more practical prospects for performance.

As well as immersing himself within Oldfield’s original album, Bergmann went back to a live-recorded version of the album and the orchestral version scored by one of the musicians on the original, David Bedford. Bergmann’s arrangement thus retains all the multi-layered rhythmic and textural richness of the original Tubular Bells, while orienting the feel of the piece in the direction of the classical minimalism for which van Veen has become known as an authoritative exponent. This new LP transfer on high-grade vinyl is designed to take advantage of the special immediacy and richness available on high-end analogue equipment to bring Tubular Bells to life as never before.