Michael Hersch

Michael Nathaniel Hersch (b. June 25, 1971) is an American composer and pianist. His music has been characterized as "darkly Romantic" classical music in a European style, essentially tonal or bitonal, but frequently "pessimistic" in its effect. However, since each new piece has been highly individual, his work cannot be fairly categorized so simply.

Biography

Initial Inspiration and Musical Education

Born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Reston, Virginia, Hersch was introduced to classical music at the age of 18 by his younger brother Jamie, who showed him a videotape of Georg Solti conducting Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. This "shook me," Hersch has written. "It scrambled everything. That's when I knew that I was to be a composer... My whole life started over at that moment." His brother also introduced him to the music of Bach, Mahler, Shostakovich, and Berg. The latter two in particular inspired Hersch's early efforts.

He almost immediately began studies at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore. Hersch has stated that "with Morris Cotel - the teacher I spent the most time with during my studies at the Peabody Conservatory - lessons consisted only of week after week coming into the teacher's studio, playing and singing through the latest work at the piano and his saying nothing more than, 'Okay. Fine. See you next week.' He believed that a composer confronting his or herself in this manner would force the composer to look in the mirror seeing, along with the good, all the flaws." Hersch moved on to the Moscow Conservatory, where he worked with Albert Leman and Roman Ledenev, and received a Certificate in Composition in 1995. He also worked with John Corigliano and John Harbison at a program for young composers in 1995, and has cited George Rochberg as a continuing presence in his musical life. Hersch then returned to Peabody for graduate studies.

Early Success

His first success came when Marin Alsop selected Elegy for Strings as winner of the American Composers Prize, and conducted it at Lincoln Center in New York in 1997. That year also saw Hersch win a Guggenheim Fellowship and become a fellow at the prestigious Tanglewood Music Center, where he worked with Christopher Rouse, followed by fellowships at the Norfolk Festival for Contemporary Music and the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan in 1998.

In 2000 Hersch won the Prix de Rome, where he worked with Luciano Berio, and in 2001 the Berlin Prize, where he worked with Hans Werner Henze. Hersch had become a decent pianist despite his rather late start as a musician. While in Berlin he was asked to play a concert. Afterward a member of the Berlin Philharmonic came up to him and asked whether he had written any chamber music. This eventually led to a recital, a larger concert, and a commercial recording on the Vanguard Classics label (issued in 2004) which includes Recordatio (for piano solo), Two Pieces for Piano, After Hölderlin's Hälfte des Lebens (2002 version for viola & cello), and Octet for Strings.

After Hölderlin's Hälfte des Lebens, inspired by a Friedrich Hölderlin poem, was originally a duo for clarinet and cello, written in 2000 for the Belgian clarinetist Walter Boeykens for the Romaeuropa Festival. The premiere was scheduled for September of 2001, but after 9/11, was cancelled and then rescheduled at a memorial concert in the Pantheon. Memories of the amazing reverberation of the historic space on that momentous occasion later inspired Hersch to write an orchestral piece, Fracta (2003), utilizing the same material.

A CD of orchestral works with Marin Alsop conducting the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra has been released on the Naxos label, and another disc on the Vanguard Classics label features Mr. Hersch as a pianist, performing not only his own work, but works of Morton Feldman, Wolfgang Rihm, and Josquin des Pres.

List of Selected Works

Orchestra

• On Sorrow, Anger and Reflection (1998), premiered by the CBC Vancouver Symphony
• Ashes of Memory (1998-99), premiered by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Mariss Jansons conducting
• Recollections of Fear, Hope and Discontent (1998), premiered by the New York Chamber Symphony
• Symphony No. 1 (1999), commissioned and performed as part of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's centennial season
• Umbra (2001), written for the Brooklyn Philharmonic and Robert Spano
• Symphony No. 2 (2001), commission by the Pittsburgh Symphony and Mariss Jansons
• Fracta (2003), based on material used in After Hölderlin's Hälfte des Lebens
• Arraché (2005), inspired by the gruesome deaths of Iraq hostages

Orchestra with soloist

• Piano Concerto (2002), premiered by Garrick Ohlsson and a co-commission of the Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Oregon symphonies

Chamber

• Elegy for Strings (1997), winner of the American Composers Prize, conducted at Lincoln Center by Marin Alsop
• Piano Quartet (1999), commissioned and premiered by the Ellen Taafe Zwilich Young Composers Workshop at Carnegie Hall
• Trio No. 1, for violin, clarinet & piano'
• Trio No. 5, for violin, clarinet & piano (1998), commissioned by the Verdehr Trio
• Quartet for Horn, Violin, Cello, and Piano, commissioned by the Orchestra of St. Luke's
• After Hölderlin's Hälfte des Lebens, for clarinet & cello (2000), written for the Belgian clarinetist Walter Boeykens for the Romaeuropa Festival
• Two Pieces for Cello and Piano (2000)
• After Hölderlin's Hälfte des Lebens, for viola & cello (2002)
• Octet for Strings, for 4 violins, 2 violas & 2 cellos (2002), a transcription of Umbra, commissioned by Boris Pergamenschikow and the Kronberg Akademie, premiered at the Schloss Neuhardenberg Festival in Berlin
• Variations on a Poem, for piano, violin, & cello (2004?), commissioned by Sequenza

Solo Instrumental

• Sonata for Unaccompanied Cello (1995, revised 2001), written for American cellist Daniel Gaisford
• Sonata for Unaccompanied Violin (1999)
• Recordatio, for piano solo, in memory of Luciano Berio
• Two Pieces for Piano, a transcription of the first two movements of the Piano Concerto
• Miłosz Fragments, for piano (2000)
• Tramontane, for solo piano (2000-01)
• Reflections on a Work of Henze (2001), performed by Hersch for Hans Werner Henze on the occasion of Henze's 75th birthday
• Sonata for Unaccompanied Cello No. 2 (2001)
• the wreckage of flowers: twenty-one pieces after poetry and prose of Czesław Miłosz (2004), a sonata for violin and piano, commissioned by Midori
• The Vanishing Pavilions (2006), a two-hour, 50-part, solo piano work after poetry of Christopher Middleton

Vocal

• Elegy, for baritone & piano (2001), poem by Theodore Roethke
• It Was Beginning Winter, for baritone & piano (2001), poem by Theodore Roethke

Links

Michael Hersch web site