This album belongs to my all time favorites from M.G. Oldfield, or rather this should be called abridged version as he marked these orchestral attempts as misappropriating his work (the other one being Orchestral Tubular Bells).

Orchestral Hergest Ridge was never officially released, there was a recording session which took place in December 1974 with David Bedford as the conductor of Royal Philharmonic, from which recordings were stored in the depths of BBC Archive. Portions of the album were featured in "The Space Movie".

Then a full length album surfaced (around year 2000, not really sure). Sound quality isn't stellar, but due to the age and nature of the album it's understandable.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ouux0A-cFQ&list=PL0233090C8335AF72

Enjoy!

PS: Maybe with good mix of courage and skills one could attempt to bring back the album to this century in form of re-recording the sessions.

 

Last edited: Sep 29, 2017

Thanks! I was just revisiting Olfield albums these past days. Master.

 

Same here, I was listening to "Hergest Ridge" and "Ommadawn" these days too! Thanks for the info.

 

Here's more info about the release:
https://tubular.net/forums/orchestral-hergest-ridge--?act=ST;f=14;t=647