Michael Hersch: across … in grief and detail

Michael Hersch’s across … in grief and detail presents three compact works written between two personal catastrophes, bringing his stark musical language into concentrated form. Scored for soprano, violin and bassoon in varying combinations, the pieces expose a raw interplay of dissonance, fragility and visceral sound-making. Drawing on texts and resonances from Christopher Middleton, Anja Utler, Sweelinck and Schumann, Hersch traces the edges of illness, memory and corporeal vulnerability. Every gesture—sung, whispered, bowed, blown—reveals the physical strain of its creation. The result is an uncompromising confrontation with darkness, rendered in sound that is unflinching, intimate and meticulously detailed.