Ah Young Hong, Steve Davislim, Ensemble Phoenix Basel, Jurg Henneberger – Michael Hersch: Poppaea (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:41:02 minutes | 1,07 GB | Genre: Classical, Opera
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © New Focus Recordings
Soprano Ah Young Hong has a large repertory extending as far back in time as Monteverdi but has an especially strong commitment to contemporary music. In her adopted U.S., she is a significant educator. Hong grew up in Seoul, South Korea, where her mother was a classical pianist.
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Ah Young Hong, Ensemble Klang, Tito Muñoz, The BBC Symphony Orchestra – Michael Hersch: The Script of Storms (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 54:12 minutes | 817 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © New Focus Recordings
Composer Michael Hersch releases two works featuring his frequent collaborator soprano Ah Young Hong: cortex and ankle with Dutch based Ensemble Klang and the script of storms with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and conductor Tito Muñoz. Hersch sets powerful texts by Christopher Middleton and Fawzi Karim respectively in these gripping works.
“Hersch’s music gets under the listener’s skin like no other … the voice is central, but a voice that sounds like an instrument and that miraculously merges with the instruments, a technique that is tailor-made for Hong … the intensity goes through marrow and bone.”
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Ah Young Hong – Michael Hersch: I hope we get a chance to visit soon (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:01:14 minutes | 618 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © New Focus Recordings
Composer Michael Hersch tackles difficult subject matter unflinchingly, delving deep inside the nature of pain, anguish, and suffering in works that frequently explore illness and mortality. I hope we get a chance to visit soon is no exception. The companion piece to his 2012 monodrama, On the Threshold of Winter, which set texts by Romanian poet Marin Sorescu who succumbed to cancer, I hope we get a chance to visit soon engages with the loss of Hersch’s close friend Mary Harris O’Reilly to the disease. Hersch’s own bout with cancer is always lurking in the subtext of these powerfully topical works, manifest in his chosen sonic world that primarily sets texts from correspondence between O’Reilly and Hersch, some of which were exchanged while both were in treatment. These texts are often set in opposition to fragments from the poetry of Rebecca Elson. The work is scored for two soprano soloists and chamber ensemble. Hersch divides the texts between the words of O’Reilly and Elson, establishing contrasting roles and perspectives on the situation that the protagonist finds herself in. That the formal release of this recording comes in the midst of a global pandemic will not be lost on anyone, and only intensifies the contemporary experience of this powerful work.
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