Recording

Initially the album was written with electronic elements, like his last album, Light & Shade, but as the album developed it became an orchestral piece. The single "Spheres" is from the early stages of the album. Oldfield wrote much of the music in the music notation software Sibelius on an Apple Macintosh. Oldfield noted in the computing magazine MacFormat that creating the orchestral score for the album was time consuming, as the MIDI timing and velocities varied too much.^[5]

On the ITV This Morning show, while promoting his autobiography, Changeling, Oldfield stated that he would be recording the album with Karl Jenkins and a full orchestra at Abbey Road Studios in early June 2007; nine months before the final release date. In an interview with British radio station Classic FM on 10 August 2007, Oldfield noted that Lang Lang had recorded his piano pieces over a webcam from Legacy Recording Studios, New York City using iChat and a Steinway piano.

Release

The album had been delayed a number of times, for various reasons. Originally, the release was aimed for Halloween;^{[citation needed]} this was later pushed back to November 2007. In September 2007, Oldfield and Universal decided to delay the release of the album until January 2008, for personal reasons. However, in November the release date was again put back until March 2008, around this time Oldfield also moved out of the United Kingdom to Spain. It was also going to be the first classical recording released on a USB flash drive, but ultimately it was only made available on CD and Online. On iTunes the album has bonus material and there was also a promotion at HMV.co.uk; a competition with a prize of the full annotated orchestral score used during the recordings. 200 randomly selected copies from Play.com were also signed by Mike Oldfield. A 2 CD Limited Edition version including both the studio and live recordings was released on 24 November 2008.

On 18 September 2007, Universal, the record label, held a presentation event, hosted by Yellow Lounge^[6] at the Tape Club in Berlin; Oldfield was not scheduled to be present, but he appeared for 5 minutes to answer questions. There was also a promotional release, packaged in a tin. It includes a heat sensitive mug mat, shaped insert brochure, and an Electronic Press Kit disc featuring 2 video clips.

In November 2007 Universal included "On My Heart" (featuring Hayley Westenra) on their No 1 Classical Album 2008 compilation album. Westenra and Oldfield performed "On My Heart" live on the ITV daytime program The Alan Titchmarsh Show on 18 March 2008. During the week beginning the 10 March, Music of the Spheres was the featured album on the Classic FM radio station.^[7]

Live at Bilbao

A second press event was scheduled at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao on 7 March 2008; as part of the launch event Oldfield performed music from Music of the Spheres live with the Euskadiko Orkestra Sinfonikoa, the Bilbao Choral Society and Hayley Westenra.^[8] The concert was recorded and was originally released exclusively on Apple's iTunes on the same day as the album, with modified artwork, EPK videos and a PDF booklet. A 2 CD version of the album was released on 24 November 2008 in a digipack.

Charts

Standard studio version

Live from Bilbao

iTunes-only version

The iTunes-only version includes Music of the Spheres, Music of the Spheres – Live from Bilbao and Interviews.

Orchestra

The Sinfonia Sfera Orchestra are:

Additional personnel

• Miles Showell – Mastering at Metropolis Mastering, London
• Simon Rhodes – Engineer
• Rupert Christie – Assistant Producer
• Richard King – Engineer