Michael Hersch: Violin Concerto / end stages

Reviews

"Michael Hersch’s Violin Concerto immediately hurls us into a wrenching scene … There are brief passages of fragile lyricism and an occasional glimmer of bittersweet nostalgia, but little respite, as even these quickly evaporate or splinter into violent spasm. Patricia Kopatchinskaja, who commissioned the concerto, aptly describes it as ‘brutal and vulnerable at the same time’, and her performance conveys that dichotomy with ferocious commitment, aided with equal fearlessness by the International Contemporary Ensemble under Tito Muñoz. The music’s intense physicality and bleak atmosphere make for gripping, if harrowing, listening. What draws me to listen again and again is Hersch’s ability to communicate desperation that somehow never plummets into despair." — Gramophone Magazine Full Article

Best Violin Concerto of 2018

Composer Michael Hersch consistently writes music with emotional immediacy that explores aching vulnerability with consummate eloquence. His Violin Concerto is like a wound still raw. Soloist Patricia Kopatchinskaja ramps up the intensity, as does ICE, conducted here by Tito Muñoz, rendering the work’s first and third movements with bracing strength and its second with fragile uneasiness. This emotion returns, amplified by high-lying solos and echoing attacks from the ensemble, to provide a tensely wrought close to the piece.

Orpheus Chamber Orchestrais renown for their conductor-less approach to chamber orchestra works. Still, the coordination and balance they exhibit on Hersch’s end stages deserves particular praise. Glacial slabs of dissonant harmonies give way to howling French horn and a buildup of contrapuntal intensity. This is succeeded by a tragically mournful tune accompanied by a bee’s nest of clusters and sliced string-led attacks. Taut wind dissonances then punctuate an angular, rambling string melody, succeeded once again by nervous pile-ups of angular crescendos. The seventh movement is buoyed by heraldic trumpet and vigorous repeated string chords, while the finale returns to a colorful, harmonically ambiguous ambience. The piece is Hersch at his most Bergian, bringing together artful organization and visceral emotion. Recommended.— Christian Carey, Sequenza21

"The dynamic violin virtuoso Patricia Kopatchinskaja—who served as the music director of the prestigious Ojai Music Festival in 2018—was riveted by a piece of music composed by Michael Hersch that she stumbled across online several years go. Attracted by the intense power of the work, she tracked down and commissioned him to write a Violin Concerto, which she plays here with trademark bravado, deftly supported by the International Contemporary Ensemble. The harrowing four-movement work took inspiration from a pair of poems by Thomas Hardy and a sculpture by Christopher Cairns, but it was written in response to the death of a friend, and there’s little doubt the music’s rigor and darkness were derived from that sense of loss. From the start, Kopatchinskaja relies on her technical brilliance, unleashing scratch tones and bruising intervals, but as the dissonance builds, her lines become more concentrated and tightly coiled. The piece slows, pitted by occasional rhythmic spasms, with the violin digging into a single pitch during the length of the third movement before fading into somnambulance, awash in weird harmonics. “End Stages,” commissioned and performed by Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, is no less brooding. Once again, the work was composed with death in mind, but inspired by a set of drawings by occasional collaborator Kevin Tuttle; the work moves toward acceptance of mortality with muted serenity." — Best of Bandcamp Contemporary Classical, August 2018

The 50 Best Albums of 2018

"Michael Hersch – Violin Concerto; End Stages: International Contemporary Ensemble with violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra / The most harrowing recording of the year combines two macabre, microtonal pieces, the latter exploring the tortured, fitful final moments of terminally ill patients." — New York Music Daily Full Article

Best of 2018 - Classical

"With Images From A Closed Ward immediately establishing Hersch as a striking architect of darkness for string quartet, this album shows that he can think big as well. The Concerto is a gnarly and gripping piece, with a performance by violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and the International Contemporary Ensemble that will be hard to better. End Stages is featured in a live performance by the legendary Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and finds them delivering the eight short movements with authority, letting the emotionally probing writing shine. I have a feeling there will be more impressive work to come from Hersch." — An Earful Full Article

"... Hersch is drawn to emotionally wrenching subject matter, and he has carved out a niche as the rare artist who can venture unflinchingly into the abyss in his work, and compel his audience to stare, unblinking, at the horrors he finds there. As frequent collaborator Miranda Cuckson said in a recent interview: "Emotionally, you have dive into his world, and technically it’s demanding ... He is not someone who writes a scherzo in the middle." Since a cancer diagnosis in 2007 (he is currently in remission) and the death of a very close friend (from cancer) in 2009, Hersch's music has, if anything, become more raw and emotionally exposed. The 2015 concerto takes cues from some extremely bleak lines by Thomas Hardy. The four-movement work bears little resemblance to a conventional concerto, aside from the ferocious (in every sense) challenges of the solo part. The first movement begins violently, even brutally, with harsh, rough sounds from soloist and ensemble. The second movement features strained, astringent, pared-down textures and slowly shifting harmonies, beginning like an accompanied cadenza, then becoming more agitated. The long, slow movement that follows is the work's strange, dark heart, with serene, beautiful islands suggesting some archaic polyphony, repeatedly attacked as though an illuminated manuscript were being slashed at by barbarians violating a sacred ritual. A very slow, desolate epilogue concludes the piece. In light of the foregoing, the subject matter of end stages is not hard to guess at. Hersch's subject here is the imminence of death; the eight short movements are inspired by drawings by artist Kevin Tuttle, who worked as set designer on Hersch’s monodrama On the Threshold of Winter. The drawings depict emaciated figures, ravaged by disease or chemotherapy, and the music progresses from dense, caustic textures to the strange, solemn beauty of final, grateful surrender." — Records International Full Article

"To my mind Michael Hersch has become one of the leading luminaries in High Modernism today. He convinces us that there is plenty of stylistic room at the top for the extension of the tradition into living times--and that he is charting a major foray into the zone with every new work. I am not alone in thinking that. If we needed further indication it has arrived decisively and happily in the major new disc that is upon us, a premier recording of end stages / violin concerto (New Focus Recordings - FCR 208). The Violin Concerto spotlights Patricia Kopatchinskaja as the solo violinist with the International Contemporary Ensemble in the capable hands of Tito Muñoz. end stages gets the attention of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Both are essential ...Heroically bleak is perhaps the two words that most occur to me as I hear the work repeatedly .. There is nothing lightweight or incidental about this music, but then Hersch happily seems incapable of meaninglessness. If the music on this program is more bracing than joyful keep in mind ... Music like literature need not be grinning at all times from ear-to-ear to involve us in serious openings onto a supra-human terrain. That Hersch can do this with increasing strikingness is a reason to rejoice anyway ... Lest we forget what makes us special, get this new volume and listen with care." — Gapplegate Classical-Modern Review Full Article

Violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja performs Michael Hersch's "Violin Concerto" with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) in a recording that also includes Hersch's "End Stages," performed by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. According to violinist Kopatchinskaja, for whom the Violin Concerto was written, the formidably difficult work is as raw as an "an open wound." She said the music "moves me so deeply, makes me speechless, tolerates neither doubt nor objection. It is like a mountain one can’t ignore....Everything is crystal clear, there is no decoration, no superficial beauty, no compromises. Everything is exactly in place, has found its perfect form." Kopatchinskaja premiered the concerto in Saint Paul, Minnesota then gave its West Coast premiere at the 2018 Ojai Music Festival, where Kopatchinskaja was Music Director and Hersch was composer-in-residence.— Laurie Niles, Violinist.Com