Patricia Kopatchinskaja - Michael Hersch: Carrion-Miles to Purgatory (2019)

This collection of recent duos by composer Michael Hersch gives the listener a chance to hear the intense expressive contrasts so characteristic of his music in a profoundly intimate context. From jarring, closely spaced intervals, to delicate, ethereal harmonics, to bracingly virtuosic passagework, Hersch’s voice projects strongly throughout this recording featuring three of his most frequent performer collaborators: Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Miranda Cuckson, and Jay Campbell, as well as the composer himself on the piano.

Kopatchinskaja commissioned Hersch specifically to write a work combining vocal and instrumental performance, and the result is a harrowing piece which marries storytelling to song. The speaking part in ...das Rückgrat berstend is precisely notated with extensive expression markings, delineating specific dynamics, durations, and character indications that engage in a form of word painting with spoken narrative form. The source text is by Christopher Middleton, and at Kopatchinskaja’s request it was translated into German. The voice mostly is heard on its own while the strings answer and color the text in responsive fashion. Hersch’s meticulous notation of the vocal part ensures that it fulfills a dual role, both as the raconteur of Middleton’s angst ridden poetry but also as a third “instrument” in the composition. As with much of Hersch’s music, the moments of repose in the work are not entirely restful -- a hollow unease lingers in the disembodied intervals.

Hersch joined violinist Miranda Cuckson for a duo performance at the Brooklyn venue National Sawdust in the fall of 2018. Drawing from his work for violin and piano (the wreckage of flowers), solo violin (the weather and landscape are on our side, Fourteen Pieces, Five Fragments), and solo piano (The Vanishing Pavilions), Hersch created a new evening-length piece - an excerpt from which appears on this recording - which further underscores the violent and meticulous nature of both the music and the performance of it. Athletic, urgent material contrasts with static, meditative sustained tones and vertical pillars of resonating sonorities in a cohesive work that deftly weaves together disparate compositions into a new work, and captures a palpable balance of focus and freedom from the moment of performance itself.

Patricia Kopatchinskaja, violin, voice
Michael Hersch, piano
Miranda Cuckson, violin
Jay Campbell, cello