Song cycle without words, by Hersch

Philadelphia Inquirer, The, October, 2006 by David Patrick Stearns

Music speaks to the troubled times in which it was written, though the instances when it addresses its contemporary audiences with unflinching directness are special chapters in history reserved for, say, Kurt Weill in soon-to-be-Nazi Germany and Dmitri Shostakovich in Stalinist Russia. Not so expectedly, Philadelphia-based Michael Hersch took his place among them with his two-hour, 50-part, full-evening piano work, "The Vanishing Pavilions." Premiered on Saturday under the auspices of Network for New Music, the piece represented a summation of the great but disturbing symphonic and chamber works he has written during the last 10 years.

The performance at St. Mark's Church also signified Hersch's emergence as a pianist. Looking a bit like an accountant at the keyboard, he conjured volcanic gestures from the piano with astonishing virtuosity. The evening felt downright historic. The piece is so directly inspired by British poet Christopher Middleton that the 35-year-old composer and 80-year-old ...