Out Today: New Focus Recordings Releases Michael Hersch's 'The Script Of Storms'

New Focus Recordings today releases composer Michael Hersch's the script of storms. The album (digital only) features two works by Hersch: cortex and ankle based on texts by Christopher Middleton, and the script of storms based on texts by Fawzi Karim.

Hersch's work has been described as "so sincere in his darkness, and so sophisticated in his expressivity, that he can make the morbid magical" (New York Magazine). Composer Georg Friedrich Haas has written that Hersch "is the explorer of an unconditional, radical expressivity that reveals the human abyss without any palliation." In the eleven-movement cortex and ankle, Hersch engages texts of British poet Christopher Middleton (1926-2015), a poet Hersch worked extensively with from their initial meeting in Germany in 2001. Hersch avoids "word painting" with Middleton's poetry, and instead uses the text to create anchor points for his creative process rather than infer any literal interpretations. In the case of cortex and ankle, the texts evoke a foreboding "overall trajectory of descent" into oblivion.

Performed by Netherlands-based Ensemble Klang, cortex and ankle features acclaimed soprano Ah Young Hong who has been a powerful muse in much of Hersch's recent vocal writing including his 2012 chamber opera On the Threshold of Winter, the 2015 song cycle a breath upwards, and in the 2016 debut performance of cortex and ankle. Ensemble Klang's tradition of performing without a conductor, along with their unique instrumentation of saxophones, trombone, keyboards, percussion, and guitar in cortex and ankle makes for a creative environment of heightened innovation and collaboration.

The second work on the album, the script of storms, sets texts of Iraqi poet and painter Fawzi Karim (1945-2019), another artist that Hersch has worked closely with. Hersch has described Karim's world as "a remarkable and disquieting place; a landscape of empathy, beauty and often unspeakable horror" (PN Review). Deeply influenced by a childhood steeped in conflict and political coups, Karim's work often evokes a sense of graphic brutality but with an intense feeling of love for humanity. The visceral nature of Karim's creativity is not only present in the text for the script of storms, but in several paintings printed alongside the album's liner notes. Hersch's the script of storms is performed by Ah Young Hong and the BBC Symphony Orchestra led by conductor Tito Muñoz.

"Empathy can only occur when artists like Middleton, Karim, and Hersch help us to see into the pain through their work, and those collective challenges they stare in the face-challenges that face all of us in one form or another, at one time or another," said soprano Ah Young Hong. "The recording truly captures the intensity, fearlessness, and importance of these powerful artists."

A composer of "uncompromising brilliance" (The Washington Post) whose work has been described by The New York Times as "viscerally gripping and emotionally transformative music ... claustrophobic and exhilarating at once, with moments of sublime beauty nestled inside thickets of dark virtuosity," Michael Hersch is widely considered among the most gifted composers of his generation. Recent events and premieres include his Violin Concerto at the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland and the Avanti Festival in Helsinki; new productions of his monodrama, On the Threshold of Winter, in Chicago, Salt Lake City, and Washington D.C., and his elegy I hope we get a chance to visit soon at the Ojai and Aldeburgh Festivals, where Mr. Hersch was a 2018 featured composer. Other recent premieres include his 10-hour chamber cycle, sew me into a shroud of leaves, a work which occupied the composer for fifteen years, at the 2019 Wien Modern Festival. In 2021, the composer's new opera, POPPAEA, premiered in Vienna and Basel as part of the Wien Modern Festival in a co-production with ZeitRäume Basel. During the 2019/20 season, Mr. Hersch was the Composer-in-Residence with the Camerata Bern, and in early 2020, his new work Agatha had its premiere performances in both Bern and Geneva. Major upcoming projects include those for Ensemble Phoenix Basel and Ensemble Musikfabrik for premieres in 2022/23.

Over the past several years, Hersch has written new works for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Ensemble Klang, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Alban Berg Ensemble Wien, Decoda Ensemble, and the Library of Congress. Other notable recent events include European performances by the Kreutzer Quartet of Images from a Closed Ward in the U.K. and Sweden, a recording of the work by the acclaimed FLUX Quartet, and a work for unaccompanied violin commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, premiered at the orchestra's Biennial in 2014. Hersch has worked closely with violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, the violinist commissioning several works, including his Violin Concerto, which premiered in 2015, his chamber work... das Rückgrat berstend, which premiered at New York City's Park Avenue Armory during the autumn of 2017, and the song cycle sapped from me broken, scheduled for premiere in 2022/23. She recently recorded the concerto with the International Contemporary Ensemble, and the duo with cellist Jay Campbell. Most recently, Kopatchinskaja performed one of the solo roles in the premiere presentations of Agatha.

Notable past performances include Night Pieces, commissioned and premiered by the Cleveland Orchestra, and a song cycle for baritone and piano, Domicilium, commissioned and premiered by Thomas Hampson and Wolfgang Rieger on San Francisco Performances. Hersch's second piano concerto, along the ravines, was given performances with the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie and the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, and as part of the George Enescu International Festival in Romania. Mr. Hersch's end stages was commissioned and premiered by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, his Zwischen Leben und Tod recently received its European premiere, and A Forest of Attics, commissioned for the Network for New Music's 25th anniversary season, was selected as one of the year's most important classical music events by The Philadelphia Inquirer. The paper said of the work, "A Forest of Attics threw a Molotov cocktail into the concert: Everything before it paled in comparison ... Hersch has written some towering works in recent years; this is yet another."

Also a pianist, noted for his "astounding facility at the keyboard" (International Piano), Mr. Hersch has appeared around the world including appearances at the Ojai Festival, Aldeburgh Festival, the Festival Dag in de Branding in the Netherlands, the Warhol Museum, the Romaeuropa Festival, the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C., Cleveland's Reinberger Chamber Hall, the Festival of Contemporary Music Nuova Consonanza, the Network for New Music Concert Series, the Left Bank Concert Society, Festa Europea della Musica, St. Louis' Sheldon Concert 39 Hall, and in New York City at Merkin Concert Hall, the 92nd St. Y - Tisch Center for the Performing Arts, and Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, among others.

Born in Washington D.C., Michael Hersch came to international attention at age twenty-five, when he was awarded First Prize in the Concordia American Composers Awards. The award resulted in a performance of his Elegy, conducted by Marin Alsop in New York's Alice Tully Hall. Later that year he became one of the youngest recipients ever of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Composition. Mr. Hersch has also been the recipient of the Rome Prize, the Berlin Prize, the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship and Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, and the President's Frontier Award from the Johns Hopkins University, among other honors.

Noted for her "fearlessness and consummate artistry" (Opera News), soprano Ah Young Hong has interpreted a vast array of repertoire, ranging from the music of Monteverdi, Bach, Mozart, and Poulenc, to works of Shostakovich, Babbitt, Haas, and Kurtág. Widely recognized for her work in Michael Hersch's monodrama, On the Threshold of Winter, The New York Times praised Ms. Hong's performance in the world premiere as "the opera's blazing, lone star." In a recent production directed by the soprano, The Chicago Tribune called her "absolutely riveting," and the Chicago Classical Review noted the soprano's "fearless presence, wielding her unamplified, bell-like voice like a weaponized instrument. Hong delivered a tour de force vocal performance in this almost unfathomably difficult music-attacking the dizzying high notes with surprising power, racing through the rapid-fire desperation of agitated sections, and bringing a numbed, toneless sprechstimme and contralto-like darkness to the low tessitura." Other operatic performances by Ms. Hong include the title role in Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea, Morgana in Handel's Alcina, Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto, Fortuna and Minerva in Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, and Asteria in Handel's Tamerlano. She has also appeared with Opera Lafayette in Rebel and Francoeur's Zélindor, roi des Sylphes at the Rose Theater in Lincoln Center and as La Musique in Charpentier's Les Arts Florissants at the Kennedy Center. In 2021, at the ZeitRäume Basel and Wien Modern Festivals, Ms. Hong gave the world premiere performances of Michael Hersch's POPPAEA.

In high demand as a concert and chamber soloist, Ms. Hong has performed with Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Ensemble Phoenix Basel, Ensemble Klang, Ensemble Dal Niente, ensemble unitedberlin, FLUX Quartet, Daedalus Quartet, NOVA Chamber Music Series in Salt Lake City, Wiener KammerOrchester, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Phoenix Symphony, Charleston Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, Concert Artists of Baltimore, and Tempesta di Mare, amongst others. In early 2020, Ms. Hong premiered Michael Hersch's the script of storms with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, later joining forces with Patricia Kopatchinskaja, clarinetist Reto Bieri and Camerata Bern to premiere Hersch's AGATHA. In the summer of 2018, she gave her Ojai Festival debut with violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja in György Kurtág's complete Kafka Fragments. Ms. Hong also appeared as soloist during the 2018 Aldeburgh Music Festival and on the CalPerformances series in Berkeley. Alex Ross from The New Yorker praised her performances as "commanding" and "transfixing." She has also appeared at the Corcoran New Music Festival in Washington DC and the Network for New music in Philadelphia; with Patricia Kopatchinskaja on the Seattle Symphony Orchestra's chamber music series, and in residency at Vanderbilt University Blair School of Music performing with pianists Mark Wait, Jacob Rhodebeck, and violinist Carolyn Huebl.

A prolific recording artist, Ms. Hong recorded the American premiere of Johann Sebastian Bach's Alles mit Gott und nichts ohn' ihn, BWV 1127, for National Public Radio's Performance Today. Other recordings include the world premiere of Rebel and Francoeur's Zélindor, roi des Sylphes (Naxos), Pergolesi's Stabat Mater (Peter Lee Music), and Sentirete una Canzonetta with Harmonious Blacksmith. Her debut solo CD, a breath upwards, on the Innova Records label featured Milton Babbitt's Philomel and Michael Hersch's a breath upwards. Upcoming recordings include Kurtág's Kafka Fragments with Patricia Kopatchinskaja, and a program featuring the music of Georg Friedrich Haas. Ms. Hong currently serves as faculty on the voice department at the Peabody Conservatory of The Johns Hopkins University.

Praised for his versatility, technical clarity, and keen musical insight, Tito Muñoz is internationally recognized as one of the most gifted conductors on the podium today. Now in his seventh season as the Virginia G. Piper Music Director of The Phoenix Symphony, Tito previously served as Music Director of the Opéra National de Lorraine and the Orchestre symphonique et lyrique de Nancy in France. Other prior appointments include Assistant Conductor positions with the Cleveland Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra and the Aspen Music Festival. Since his tenure in Cleveland, Tito has celebrated critically acclaimed successes with the orchestra, among others stepping in for the late Pierre Boulez in 2012 and leading repeated collaborations with the Joffrey Ballet, including the orchestra's first staged performances of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring in the reconstructed original choreography of Vaslav Nijinsky.

Tito has appeared with many of the most prominent orchestras in North America, including those of Atlanta, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, and Milwaukee, as well as the New York Philharmonic, Orchestra of St. Luke's, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the National Symphony Orchestra. He also maintains a strong international conducting presence, including recent and forthcoming engagements with the SWR Symphonieorchester, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, a tour with Orchestre National d'Île de France, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra, Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, Danish National Chamber Orchestra, Luxembourg Philharmonic, Opéra Orchestre National Montpellier/A Midsummer Night's Dream, Opéra de Rennes/The Turn of the Screw, Auckland Philharmonia, Sydney Symphony and Sao Paolo State Symphony.

As a proponent of new music, Tito champions the composers of our time through expanded programming, 33 commissions, premieres, and recordings. He has conducted important premieres of works by Christopher Cerrone, Kenneth Fuchs, Dai Fujikura, Michael Hersch, Adam Schoenberg, and Mauricio Sotelo. During his tenure as Music Director of the Opéra National de Lorraine, Tito conducted the critically-acclaimed staged premiere of Gerald Barry's opera The Importance of Being Earnest. A great advocate of the music of Michael Hersch, he led the world premiere of Hersch's monodrama On the Threshold of Winter at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2014, followed by the premiere of his Violin Concerto with Patricia Kopatchinskaja and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in 2015, a piece they also recorded with the International Contemporary Ensemble on the New Focus label. Most recently he gave the world and European premieres of I hope we get a chance to visit soon at the Ojai and Aldeburgh Festivals.

Born in Queens, New York, Tito began his musical training as a violinist in New York City public schools. He attended the LaGuardia High School of the Performing Arts, the Juilliard School's Music Advancement Program, and the Manhattan School of Music Pre-College Division. He furthered his training at Queens College (CUNY) as a violin student of Daniel Phillips. Tito received conducting training at the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen where he studied with David Zinman and Murry Sidlin. He is the winner of the Aspen Music Festival's 2005 Robert J. Harth Conductor Prize and the 2006 Aspen Conducting Prize, returning to Aspen as the festival's Assistant Conductor in the summer of 2007, and later as a guest conductor.

Tito made his professional conducting debut in 2006 with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center, invited by Leonard Slatkin as a participant of the National Conducting Institute. That same year, he made his Cleveland Orchestra debut at the Blossom Music Festival. He was awarded the 2009 Mendelssohn Scholarship sponsored by Kurt Masur and the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Foundation in Leipzig, and was a prizewinner in the 2010 Sir Georg Solti International Conducting Competition in Frankfurt.

The BBC Symphony Orchestra plays a central role at the heart of British musical life, as the backbone of the BBC Proms and Associate Orchestra at the Barbican, where it gives an annual season of concerts. It has a strong commitment to 20th and 21st-century music. The BBC SO has a close partnership with Chief Conductor Sakari Oramo and performs regularly with Dalia Stasevksa, Principal Guest Conductor, Semyon Bychkov, who holds the Günter Wand Conducting Chair, and Conductor Laureate Sir Andrew Davis. The BBC SO gives regular performances with the BBC Symphony Chorus. Recordings for BBC Radio 3 are central to the Orchestra's life and the vast majority of concerts are broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and available for 30 days after broadcast on BBC Sounds. The BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, alongside the BBC Concert Orchestra, BBC Singers and BBC Proms offer enjoyable and innovative education and community activities and take a leading role in the BBC Ten Pieces and BBC Young Composer programs.

Founded in The Hague in 2003, Ensemble Klang's innovative programs, their commissioning of work from some of the most exciting composers working today, and the inception of their own record label, has seen them quickly rise to become "one of the top ensembles" (NRC Handelsblad) in the Netherlands' rich contemporary music scene. Ensemble Klang's dynamic approach to contemporary music and "sonic adventure" has attracted not only a loyal public following but also the active participation of some of today's leading composers. Projects have been staged with Heiner Goebbels, David Lang, Tom Johnson, Julia Wolfe, Michael Hersch, Oscar Bettison and Peter Adriaansz. Its unique yet versatile instrumentation - saxophones, trombone, keyboards, percussion, guitar, electronics - generates the energetic drive and passion of a band. Performing without a conductor, a typical Ensemble Klang program combines complex music requiring virtuosic accuracy and breathtaking musical risk. They are born collaborators, and participate in music theater, site-specific and dance projects almost every season. Klang members feel equally at home in the concert hall, in the open air at a festival or at a pop venue.

the script of storms Tracklist
MICHAEL HERSCH (b. 1971) - cortex and ankle - songs after texts of Christopher Middleton
1-11. cortex and ankle [26:44]
Ah Young Hong, soprano
Ensemble Klang
MICHAEL HERSCH (b. 1971) - the script of storms - songs after texts of Fawzi Karim
12-20. the script of storms [27:32]
Ah Young Hong, soprano
Tito Muñoz, conductor
BBC Symphony Orchestra

Michael Hersch, composer
Ah Young Hong, soprano
Tito Muñoz, conductor
Ensemble Klang
BBC Symphony Orchestra

Total Duration: 54:16

Tracks 1-11:
Recorded by Arne Bock in the Jurriaanse Zaal on December 8, 2016
Mixed and produced by Arne Bock and Pete Harden
Mastered by Arne Bock
With support from De Doelen, Rotterdam

Tracks 12-20:
BBC Recording Engineer: Pete Smith
BBC Assistant Recording Engineer: Chris Rouse
BBC Recording Producer: Ann McKay
Venue: Studio 1, BBC Maida Vale Studios
Date of recording: 2/14/2020

Edited and mixed by Ryan Streber at Oktaven Audio, Mount Vernon, NY

Produced in association with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Radio 3
© BBC 2022 The copyright in the recording is owned by the BBC

Album mastered by Ryan Streber at Oktaven Audio, Mount Vernon, NY

Cover painting - Fawzi Karim, The Swimmer

Bibliographic Information

Christopher Middleton. Collected Poems. Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press Limited, 2008.

Fawzi Karim, with Anthony Howell and Abbas Kadhim, translators. Plague Lands and Other Poems. Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press Limited, 2011.