scars plummet to the corners, Michael Hersch’s concert-length flute & piano cycle, receives world & NY premieres in April
(March 2025) — “Respected for his uncompromising tragic vision,” Michael Hersch is “one of the most prominent composers in the country” (The New Yorker). Next month, scars plummet to the corners, his concert-length cycle for flute and piano, receives its world and New York premieres at Baltimore’s Peabody Institute (April 7) and Manhattan’s DiMenna Center for Classical Music (April 25) respectively. An American Modern Opera Company (AMOC*) commission, the 29-movement work receives these first performances from its dedicatee, flutist and AMOC* member Emi Ferguson, with longtime Hersch collaborator Jacob Rhodebeck on piano.
Hersch explains:
“It was a great honor to receive a commission from the American Modern Opera Company. At a time when fearlessness is increasingly absent, AMOC*’s members and the work they do represent a resolute and positive exception to this trend. Having worked with flutist Emi Ferguson I came quickly to learn of the rare skill and sensibility – both technical and expressive – that she possesses. I wanted to write a work that allowed for an exploration of her instrument and the ways she interacts with it.”
Completed in 2020, scars plummet to the corners represents an unflinching and virtuosic meditation on the pandemic. As happened to so many works from that time, the cycle’s premiere was postponed, and it has yet to be performed in its entirety. However, Ferguson previewed two of its 29 movements at the 2022 Ojai Music Festival, where Hersch’s “profound, mind-altering flute-piano piece” was hailed as “a highlight of Thursday night’s program – and the festival” (The Santa Barbara Independent). As theSan Francisco Classical Voice elaborated: “The musical trajectory moves from tender to tough to chillingly still and mysterious in its slow, lingering final section. This late-night juncture was one of those magical Ojai moments.”
See Emi Ferguson and Conor Hanick perform excerpts from scars plummet to the corners at the 2022 Ojai Music Festival.
A 2023 recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, Ferguson will be joined for both upcoming premieres by Jacob Rhodebeck. The pianist has previously performed multiple evening-length solo piano cycles by Hersch, including The Vanishing Pavilions, a monumental three-hour work, of which the pianist’s interpretation proved “astounding” (The Philadelphia Inquirer) and “searing” (The New York Times).
About Michael Hersch
American composer Michael Hersch writes “viscerally gripping and emotionally transformative music” (The New York Times) of “uncompromising brilliance” (The Washington Post). Recent career highlights include performances of his Violin Concerto at Switzerland’s Lucerne Festival, Helsinki’s Avanti Festival, and with the Ensemble intercontemporain in Paris; productions of his two-act monodrama, On the Threshold of Winter, in New York, Chicago, Salt Lake City, and Washington D.C.; accounts of his elegy I hope we get a chance to visit soon at the Ojai and Aldeburgh Festivals; and premieres of his eleven-hour chamber cycle, sew me into a shroud of leaves, at the Wien Modern Festival and New York’s National Sawdust. A nominee for the 2023 Austrian Music Theater Prize for Best Contemporary Music Theater, his opera Poppaea premiered in Vienna and Basel in a co-production of the ZeitRäume Basel and Wien Modern Festivals. His most recent opera, and we, each, written for soprano Ah Young Hong after texts by Shane McCrae, premiered in Baltimore, Washington D.C., and New York earlier this season. This is what critics were saying after its New York premiere last month at National Sawdust:
“[An] extraordinary work. … I consider Hersch to be one of the central composers of our time, [with] a reputation built over the many bleakly powerful vocal pieces he’s composed. … As the music began, I knew it was Hersch’s world, and we were only living in it. … I hope they record this one soon.” (An Earful blog)
“and we, each challenges the audience at every turn. Hersch took no prisoners with his new opera … I found it mesmerizing – thought-provoking in ways I can’t explain. … In short, the evening was a creative success, easily assimilable or not.” (Broadway World)
“Hersch probes the infinite distance at the heart of relationships. Two people embrace, their hands and bodies covered in white clay slip. They smear each other with streaks of the material, temporarily freezing their forms before motion causes the clay to crackle. It’s a striking image – a couple who try to fix one another into objects, only to find that they cannot. This is Michael Hersch’s opera and we, each, a narrative constructed from the poetry of Shane McCrae that follows the slow, agonizing process of a relationship breaking down and the occasionally beautiful patterns that can form in the cracks.” (Observer)
Hersch first came to international notice at age 25, when he won First Prize at the Concordia American Composers Awards and became one of the youngest recipients of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Composition. His other honors include the Rome Prize, the Berlin Prize, the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship, the President’s Frontier Award from Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University, and the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts & Letters.
Michael Hersch: scars plummet to the corners (completed 2020)
World & New York premieres of American Modern Opera Company (AMOC*) commission
April 7 at 7:30pm
Baltimore, MD
Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University
Sylvia Adalman Recital Series (world premiere)
April 25 at 7:30pm
New York, NY
DiMenna Center for Classical Music (New York premiere)
Emi Ferguson, flute
Jacob Rhodebeck, piano