Michael Hersch: Across … in grief and Detail

Featuring

Ah Young Hong
Ben Roidl-Ward
William Overcash
Michael Hersch

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Compositional Technique

Michael Hersch's 'Miserere mei Domine' is a fantasia on music by Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck and Robert Schumann, later incorporating the 'Frère Jacques' melody from Mahler's First Symphony.

Performer Biography

Soprano Ah Young Hong has premiered almost all of Michael Hersch's theatrical and vocal music since his 2012 monodrama, On the Threshold of Winter.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Composer Michael Hersch believes an individual's nature and work are often shaped more by tragedies than by anything else, with beautiful moments contoured by darkness.

Compositional Technique

Michael Hersch's musical style, characterized by an emotionally raw mix of discord and fragile beauty, is brought into sharp focus in these modest-scale works.

Composer Biography

Michael Hersch's artistic career has been shaped by personal experiences with sickness, loss, and trauma, including his own cancer diagnosis and his wife's breast cancer.

Composition History

The unusual instrumentation of soprano, violin, and bassoon for 'sapped from me broken' arose from Michael Hersch's desire to deepen relationships with performers Ah Young Hong and Patricia Kopatchinskaja, and his new interest in writing for bassoon.