Music for String Instruments, Volume II:
Michael Hersch: the wreckage of flowers
Vanguard Classics (cat. No.: MC-105)
Release date: November 23, 2010
Miranda Cuckson, violin; Blair McMillen, piano
Fourteen Pieces for unaccompanied violin
the wreckage of flowers for violin and piano
Five Fragments for unaccompanied violin

 CD Purchase includes 12 panels of original artwork by Nicholas Cairns

Vanguard Classics is proud to announce the release of the second volume in its ambitious survey of Michael Hersch's works for strings. Volume I of the Vanguard series, which featured Hersch's early Sonatas Nos. 1 & 2 for Unaccompanied Cello, was released to great acclaim in 2009. The current disc comprises his works for violin, featuring violinist Miranda Cuckson, who has emerged over the past decade as among the foremost new music advocates of her generation.

The present title is already Vanguard’s fifth recording of Hersch’s works, a rare honor for a composer then not yet 40.  His first disc of chamber music was released in 2003, with performances by the String Soloists of the Berlin Philharmonic, alongside performances of Hersch’s piano works with the composer at the keyboard.  His second disc for the label, on which Hersch performed his own Milosz Fragments in addition to works by Josquin des Pres, Wolfgang Rihm, and Morton Feldman, was selected by both The Washington Post and Newsday as among the most important recordings of 2004-5.  In 2007, Vanguard released a two-CD boxed set of the composer's landmark work, The Vanishing Pavilions, again with the composer at the piano.

The new recording, features Hersch's Five Fragments, Fourteen Pieces after texts of Primo Levi, both for unaccompanied violin, and the wreckage of flowers: 21 pieces after poetry and prose of Czeslaw Milosz, where Ms. Cuckson is joined by pianist Blair McMillen.