Michael Hersch launches premiere-packed season at Merkin

Composer Michael Hersch will launch a season of premieres with a full evening devoted to his music on October 18 at New York’s Merkin Hall, featuring Hersch performing in the world premiere of From The Vanishing Pavilions for solo piano. The work is an arrangement drawn from Hersch’s critically acclaimed two-hour work for the instrument, The Vanishing Pavilions. The Merkin concert will also include the New York premiere of After Hölderlin’s “Hälfte des Lebens” for viola and cello. Other major premieres during the 2011-12 season include Hersch’s new song cycle on texts by Thomas Hardy, Domicilium, in Nashville in January, with baritone Thomas Hampson. In March, the Cleveland Orchestra will present the world premiere of Hersch’s concerto for trumpet, Night Pieces. The Blair String Quartet will debut Hersch’s first string quartet, Images from a Closed Ward, in Nashville in February, with the New York premiere to follow at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in April. In May, pianist Shai Wosner joins Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony for the world premiere of along the ravines, the composer’s second piano concerto.
 
The New York premiere of Hersch’s After Hölderlin’s “Hälfte des Lebens” at Merkin Hall on October 18 will feature violist Miranda Cuckson and cellist Julia Bruskin. Hersch himself will be at the piano to give the world premiere of From The Vanishing Pavilions, representing his first public performance in New York in more than a decade. About his premiere of the work’s epic original version in 2006, The Philadelphia Inquirer said: “The evening felt downright historic. [Hersch] conjured volcanic gestures from the piano with astonishing virtuosity. Overtly or covertly, The Vanishing Pavilions is about the destruction of shelter (both in fact and in concept) and life amid the absence of any certainty. And though the music is as deeply troubled as can be, its restless directness also commands listeners not to be paralyzed by existential futility.” The Financial Times added: “Hersch is one of the most fertile musical minds to emerge in the U.S. over the past generation, and this two-hour work for piano solo is his magnum opus… Its powerful imagination and poetic mood compel attention.”
 
Thomas Hampson co-commissioned Domicilium with the ASCAP Foundation, and the baritone will give the world premiere of this song cycle on texts by Thomas Hardy on January 26 at Vanderbilt University’s Ingram Hall in Nashville. On February 17, the Blair String Quartet will debut Hersch’s first string quartet, Images from a Closed Ward, at Ingram Hall, with the New York premiere to follow on April 5 at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall. The 40-minute Images from a Closed Ward – inspired by Michael Mazur’s etchings of scenes from asylums in the 1960s – has expressive indications ranging from “longing, quiet, extreme grief” to “raging violently throughout.” Blair violinist Connie Heard says that the latter passages are “some of the loudest, most ‘raging violently throughout’ music that we’ve ever played. It was a very intense experience to read it the first time and say, ‘Wow, how are we going to do this?’ “Cellist Felix Wang notes, “When you hear this piece, it’s not going to be something a string quartet would sound like. The voice that you hear in his music is original.”
 
On March 15 and 17, the Cleveland Orchestra and its principal trumpeter, Michael Sachs, will give the world premiere of Hersch’s concerto Night Pieces at Cleveland’s Severance Hall, with Giancarlo Guerrero conducting. And on May 18 at Seattle’s Benaroya Hall, pianist Shai Wosner joins conductor Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony for the world premiere of along the ravines, Hersch’s second piano concerto. Of his first piano concerto, premiered in 2002 by Garrick Ohlsson, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette declared that it stands as “a tremendous achievement. It not only recasts the very nature of concertos but creates a realm of illusive meaning and segmented thought that mirrors the way we think and mourn.”
 
Michael Hersch
 
Widely considered among the most gifted composers of his generation, Michael Hersch continues to write music of tremendous power and invention. Writing in The Washington Post more than a decade ago, critic Tim Page heralded the arrival on the international stage of “a Promethean creator who has been charged with relaying his particular message. He combines a mixture of urgency and facility that is dazzling.”
 
Born in 1971 in Washington, D.C., Hersch first came to international attention at age 25, when he was awarded first prize in the American Composers Awards. The award resulted in a performance of his Elegy, conducted by Marin Alsop in New York’s Alice Tully Hall in 1997. One of the youngest recipients ever of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Composition, has also received the Rome Prize and the Berlin Prize. He studied at the Peabody Institute of Music in Baltimore, with additional studies at the Moscow Conservatory in Russia. He currently heads the Department of Composition at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University.
 
Highlights of Hersch’s composing career include his Symphony No. 2, commissioned by Mariss Jansons and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. His first Piano Concerto, commissioned by Garrick Ohlsson and the orchestras of St. Louis, Oregon and Pittsburgh, was premiered in 2002. His work for violin and piano, the wreckage of flowers, which was commissioned by Midori, was given performances by the violinist and pianist Robert McDonald in Lisbon, London and New York during 2004. Arraché, commissioned by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra for the opening of its new concert hall, was premiered in 2005. The next year, in Philadelphia, the composer gave the world premiere of his landmark two-hour work for solo piano, The Vanishing Pavilions.
 
Vanguard Classics has embarked on a three-volume survey of Hersch’s complete music for solo strings. This project comes after the acclaimed 2007 release of The Vanishing Pavilions, with the composer at the piano. His second disc for the label, featuring the composer performing his own works in addition to those of Feldman, Rihm and Josquin, was selected by The Washington Post and Newsday as among the most important recordings of 2004-05. In 2006, a recording of Hersch’s orchestral works, including his Symphony Nos. 1 and 2, was released in the Naxos American Classics series, with Marin Alsop conducting the Bournemouth Symphony.
 
Hersch’s mentor, the late composer George Rochberg, called the younger composer “a rare and unique talent…. His music sounds the dark places of the human heart and soul. The inherent drama of his work is remarkable for being completely unselfconscious, unstudied and powerful in its projection, convinced and convincing.”
 
Upcoming Premieres
 
October 18
New York, NY: Merkin Hall
After Hölderlin’s “Hälfte des Lebens” for viola and cello (New York premiere)
From The Vanishing Pavilions for solo piano (world premiere)
Michael Hersch, piano; Miranda Cuckson, viola; Julia Bruskin, cello
           
January 26
Nashville, TN: Ingram Hall, Vanderbilt University
Domicilium – song cycle on texts by Thomas Hardy (world premiere)
Thomas Hampson, baritone; Craig Rutenberg, piano
 
February 17
Nashville, TN: Ingram Hall, Vanderbilt University
Images from a Closed Ward for string quartet (world premiere)
Blair String Quartet
 
March 15 and 17
Cleveland, OH: Severance Hall
Night Pieces for trumpet and orchestra (world premiere)
Michael Sachs, trumpet; Cleveland Orchestra; Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor
 
April 5
New York, NY: Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall
Images from a Closed Ward for string quartet (New York premiere)
Blair String Quartet
 
May 18
Seattle, WA: Benaroya Hall
along the ravines for piano and orchestra (world premiere)
Shai Wosner, piano; Seattle Symphony; Gerard Schwarz, conductor
 
www.michaelhersch.com