"If the symmetries and proportions of Mr. Hersch's music evoke the grounded fixity of architecture, its dynamism and spontaneous evolution are those of the natural world. Its somber eloquence sings of truths that are personal yet not confessional, making the time honored distinction between a Classical and a Romantic sensibility difficult to apply. Perhaps strangest of all, Mr. Hersch's music moves faster than the clock. Under the composer's fingers, a half-hour piano study passes in what cannot be more than six or eight minutes of subjective time. ... within the sober palette, the expressive power and range are vast." -- The New York Times (2001)
"Hersch demonstrates an impressive control of dissonance and a keen textural awareness of sound. His writing swings between the hazy and the precise, between a dark, tone-clustered opacity that hits in the gut, and a crystalline transparency that draws the ear toward the smallest details: a pair of falling intervals on the piano, a muted jab in the basses. The piece ends with a series of blurry chords held in the lower strings. These final notes are present but mysteriously distant, like the memory of sound corrupted by the distance of time."
-- The Washington Post
"... a haiku-like series of economic gestures with devastating emotional impact.” -- The Philadelphia Inquirer
"... astounding facility at the keyboard." -- International Piano
“... a world resonant with profound, sometimes rhapsodic, sometimes crushing emotion. His music knows no ‘as if’s'... kaleidoscopic strategies of transition and contrast that convey his messages with efficiency and power ... hurling brief phrases back and forth at top speed like thunderbolts, the voices of the instruments clash in apparent argument until the piano entered, calming the pandemonium. Drowsily, gloomily, the basses stirred to life soon joined by higher strings, which hovered like a heavy canopy studded with bright clusters of notes. Then solo winds were heard from, in close formation, suddenly rising in a spike of anguish. The strings returned, section by diaphanous section. In a trice, yet not abruptly, a light went out, as if the sun had set, and a mood of despair set in. Shrill flutes, then the brass and percussion took over, insistent and brutal. The road ahead held further surprises: an icy, stratospheric passage for the strings, an elegy for the woodwinds, background figures that plinked and strummed, a frenzied, whiffling outburst in the upper registers over a granitic yet propulsive pulse in the bass. Most fascinating of all was the ending, in which short sections of profoundly divergent character alternated and stopped, alternated and stopped. Lost paradise. ... shifts minute but momentous." -- The Wall St. Journal
"... extraordinarily communicative music ... Mr. Hersch's music speaks for itself eloquently." -- The New York Times
"The best insight came with Hersch at the piano. ... prodigious keyboard skill. ... a stunning virtuosity that dropped one’s jaw." -- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"Intensely expressive and personal, the raw emotionality of its craggy landscapes of sheer rock faces, sharp peaks and menacing crevasses can unnerve the first-time listener. Yet for all of its diverse qualities, this firm, distinct voice continues to appeal to a wide range of ears. A landscape you can't help but step into, right away. But as it progresses it feels more like an inner climatic state than any sort of place, a subconscious musical netherworld where the weight of air is of salient concern. Laid out in three movements Hersch starts the piece with traditional modals, but melds them, via bitter clusters of chords, to yield fresh ideas within his rich chromatic palette. Heavy weather rolls and growls ... a sudden tonal sirocco from the back rows of brass - and then recedes back into a low lying fog of moaning strings. An off-stage piano echoes and magnifies the solo piano's material for an eerie reverb effect. Ominous writhings settle into calm searching pools of pensive music, or soar off in a brief lyrical fling. Atmospheric elements - wind, temperature, moisture - all combine in peculiar ways to render clouds, colours, and precipitation that develop, like a weather system, along a slow trajectory. Resolution is inexorable. One must simply experience all its alluring moods to the fullest, the pelting rain as well as the breaking clouds. ...dense but utterly absorbing. Though one may not quite feel placed in this mesmerising cosmos at first, one is irresistibly drawn to it. There is a curious magnetism in a voice so unselfconscious, unstudied and inimitable. It's rare that we get to hear a work that makes us think for days afterward, and in this case, the last notes are barely a memory and we want to be back in it." --International Piano (on the premiere of the Piano Concerto - 2002)
"The Piano Concerto… is a tremendous achievement. It not only recasts the very nature of concertos but creates a realm of illusive meaning and segmented thought that mirrors the way we think and mourn." -- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“... a Promethean creator who has been charged with relaying his particular message. He combines a mixture of urgency and facility that is dazzling.” -- The Washington Post (1999)
“No doubt the composer, at the age of 30, ranks as the new hope of American musical culture.” -- Berliner Morgenpost (2002)
"The cello by itself has hardly ever resounded so brilliantly as in Hersch's Sonata No. 2 for Solo Cello... arresting ideas and sonic miracles piled in one upon another for nearly 50 minutes in this, the closing work of the concert. Once again, one was impressed by a huge musical intellect who isn't, at least for now, aiming for the hit parade." -- Fort Worth Star-Telegram
"... phenomenal musical ability" -- Financial Times
Review (click here) of the premiere of The Vanishing Pavilions from The Philadelphia Inquirer
RECORDING REVIEWS