Music has tackled many difficult subjects, including the threat of nuclear annihilation and the Holocaust. There has been music about illness too—in recent times, we’ve had John Corigliano’s Symphony No. 1, his response to the AIDS epidemic. I’m sure we will start seeing COVID-19-related works any day now. Talking about AIDS and now talking about COVID-19 has been a survival mechanism, but what about the diseases that make people so uncomfortable that talking about them is almost taboo? What about cancer? Michael Hersch’s I hope we get a chance to visit soon addresses the disease that is a leading killer in the world, second only to cardiovascular disease, and he does it in such an unflinching way that many listeners, I imagine, will not be able to listen to this CD.

Hersch is an American composer, born in 1971 in Washington, D.C. He himself is a cancer survivor, and he has taken his texts from two women who were not so fortunate. These women are his friend Mary Harris O’Reilly, who described her struggles with the disease in letters to the composer, and the astronomer Rebecca Elson, who described her struggles, in a more figurative way, with poetry. These texts are performed (not just spoken, but also sung, whispered, moaned, screamed, and so on) by sopranos Hong and Duffy, respectively. As the work moves from one relatively brief movement to the next, the two voices, which at first alternate, are increasingly woven together. (Death is an experience that all of us have in common?) The 15 movements are preceded by a prologue, which uses a text by poet Christopher Middleton, performed simultaneously by the two sopranos (both in synch and out) in English and in the “subtle remove” of a German translation. The instruments used in this work are clarinet, bassoon, alto saxophone, piano, and string quintet (two violins, viola, cello, and double bass).

Let me warn you that Hersch holds nothing back. There are no moments of dark humor, what hope there is for recovery is soon dashed, and there is no serene resignation or acceptance at the end. In fact, this work ends suddenly, as if the last few pages of those score had gone missing. The music is frequently ugly and sometimes frightening. It is a horror movie, if you will, except you cannot turn it off, your mortality is in the leading role, it is never the least bit fun, and the horror is never gratuitous. “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

I cannot imagine what it is like to perform this work. Hong and Duffy are outstanding singers and equally outstanding actresses, performing the music and the texts as if they were looking out from O’Reilly’s and Elson’s failing bodies. To describe the contributions of the instrumental ensemble as, at times, assaults or as acts of cruelty is not going too far. When the ensemble is more quiet, it is the quietness of the ICU, of the IV drip, and of the faces fading out at one’s hospital bedside. This performance was recorded by the BBC at the 2018 Aldeburgh Music Festival, but of course there is no applause at the end. How could there be?

I’ve never heard anything quite like this in decades of listening. I hope we get a chance to visit soon is brutal, and honest, and, in consequence, hard to stomach. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t make an effort, however.