US premiere of Michael Hersch’s in the snowy margins
Violinist Miranda Cuckson continues to champion the music of Michael Hersch in 2011. On January 18, 2011, Cuckson gives a recital at New York’s Union Theological Seminary under the auspices of the Transit Circle Contemporary Music Series, of which she is the director. The US premiere of in the snowy margins closes the first half of her program, and Hersch’s large-scale work Fourteen Pieces after texts of Primo Levi comprises the second.
Cuckson is featured on Volume II of Vanguard Classics’ survey of Hersch’s works for string instruments, released in November 2010. The new title is Vanguard’s fifth recording of Hersch’s works, a rare honor for a composer not yet 40. His second disc for the label was selected by both the Washington Post and Newsday as one of the most important recordings of 2004-05, while his fourth—the first volume of the present series—was glowingly reviewed by the New York Times: “The riveting piece [Sonata No. 1 for Unaccompanied Cello] [is] given a gripping performance by Daniel Gaisford. … The intensity and communicative power of this sonata, at times an anguished lament, is typical of much of Mr. Hersch’s work. … The reflective second movement, a showcase for Mr. Gaisford’s rich, penetrating tone and searing musicality, ebbs and flows into the harmonically rich final movement, with its virtuoso challenges and almost brutal intensity. Mr. Gaisford … offers a mesmerizing performance of Mr. Hersch’s seven-movement Sonata No. 1.”
January 18, 2011 at 8pm
James Memorial Chapel, Union Theological Seminary
3041 Broadway at 121 Street
Program:
JS Bach Sarabande and Double from Partita in B minor, BWV 1002 (1720)
Ralph Shapey Four Etudes for Violin (1980)
JS Bach Tempo di Bourrée and Double from Partita in B minor
Iannis Xenakis Mikka S (1976)
Michael Hersch in the snowy margins (2010, US premiere)
Michael Hersch 14 Pieces after texts of Primo Levi (2007)
Admission $15/10
Vanguard Classics Recording Release Video for Hersch’s new release: the wreckage of flowers – Works for Violin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TRdxjmevDw
Video of movement 13 from Michael Hersch’s Fourteen Pieces:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXBw5W2z7Z4&feature=related
Directed by violinist Miranda Cuckson, TRANSIT CIRCLE is a series of chamber music concerts involving a flexible collection of the highest caliber performers, rather than a fixed ensemble roster. TRANSIT CIRCLE concerts present extremely accomplished, imaginative performances of an array of works mainly from the present and the recent past. They expose listeners to significant, intriguing styles and developments of our era, and provide an opportunity to enjoy the synergetic energy of outstanding musical talents in performances of exciting compositions. A transit circle is a telescope used to measure both the time of a star’s crossing the meridian and its distance from the zenith, thus indicating its relation to a point on Earth in terms of time and space. The transit circle suggests our desire to orient ourselves with the shifting musical world around us. TRANSIT CIRCLE had its enthusiastically received and critically praised inaugural concert in September 2007. It has presented several world and United States premieres.
www.michaelhersch.com