Sherif Dahroug — “Exordium: Horizon of the Two Sycamores” (2025)

The sonic ritual of duality — between Egyptian tradition and European avant-garde

With Exordium: Horizon of the Two Sycamores, Egyptian-French composer Sherif Dahroug inaugurates his concept album Dichotomy — one of the most symbolically dense and visually sonic works of the year.

Awarded at the European Classical Music Awards 2025 in London, the work presents itself as a contemporary symphonic poem in five movements — a sonic metamorphosis exploring the concept of duality through musical and mythic language.

The title itself refers to an ancient symbol: the Two Sycamores of the Horizon — sacred trees in Egyptian cosmology marking the threshold between life and death, day and night, the visible world and the beyond. On this subtle boundary — as delicate as the light of dawn — Dahroug constructs a composition that is both ritual and reflection, balanced between classical writing, jazz-like improvisation, and timbral experimentation.

“Exordium” serves as the portal: a slow awakening of strings and woodwinds, a harmonic suspension evoking the moment when consciousness rises from cosmic sleep. The first notes unfold like shadows taking shape, with open intervals and a masterful use of silence as a dramatic element. Gradually, the composition opens into an impressionistic weave, where modal harmonies dialogue with irregular pulses and micro-textural variations. The result is a music that does not describe — it invokes: each instrumental gesture becomes a ritual act, each dissonance a passage of being.

From a formal perspective, Dahroug revisits the nineteenth-century symphonic poem (Liszt, Debussy, Strauss) through a contemporary lens, filtered by a transcultural sensitivity. Egyptian and Middle Eastern influences are never quoted directly; they are transfigured — fused within the harmonic language as archetypal traces. The maqam intertwines with quartal harmonies, percussions evoke archaic rites yet move with jazz freedom, while the woodwinds unfold in dialogues reminiscent of Olivier Messiaen, John Zorn, and Abdullah Ibrahim.

The central movement reaches an almost mystical summit: the themes of light and darkness, life and death, merge into a cyclical counterpoint where the two forces cease to oppose each other — becoming manifestations of the same energy. The orchestration — dense yet transparent — reveals the sense of a “cosmic breath” running through the entire work: a pulse that is not merely rhythmic but metaphysical, embodying Dahroug’s vision of sound as the primordial substance of creation.