Michael Hersch: I hope we get a chance to visit soon
New Focus Recordings

Don't be fooled by the seeming innocuousness of the title I hope we get a chance to visit soon: this sixteen-part elegy by Michael Hersch (b. 1971) is both unsparing and gut-wrenching. Cancer is the scaffolding on which it's constructed, specifically the cancer that claimed the life of his close friend Mary O'Reilly, a historian who succumbed to it in 2009 at forty-five. Adding to the work's impact is that in 2007 Hersch himself contracted the disease and, at the very time he was working on the piece, his wife Karen Klaiber Hersch was diagnosed with breast cancer (both are now cancer-free). By the composer's own admission, the passing of O'Reilly and the feeling of irresolution it left in its wake makes I hope we get a chance to visit soon a creation of extreme personal resonance.

In weaving excerpts of e-mail correspondence between O'Reilly and Hersch into its libretto, the seventy-minute piece allows the material to resonate powerfully for those outside the immediate circle. Her words possess an unsentimental matter-of-factness that doesn't wholly conceal the fear, anxiety, and dread she presumably was experiencing behind the brave front. The sharing of personal details such as “I had a rather scary conversation with my oncologist” are punctuated by her repeated request “Please drop me a line when you have a chance,” and her heartbreaking words at work's end (from the last note Hersch received from her before her death)—“So that's what's new with me … it's kind of hard not to be frightened”—take on an even greater pathos in light of the outcome.

The work is exceptionally well-crafted and powerful in execution. On this live recording from the 2018 Aldeburgh Music Festival, all of O'Reilly's words are spoken and sung by Ah Young Hong; text fragments by poet Rebecca Elson (1960-1999), dead from non-Hodgkins lymphoma at thirty-nine, are delivered by Kiera Duffy. The contrast between the texts is itself fascinating: while O'Reilly's is the more conversational, Elson's confronts directly what the other's more alludes to. Before their words appear, the opening part, an extended prelude of sorts, presents texts by British poet Christopher Middleton (1926-2015) set in the original English and in German translation, a move that establishes a template for what follows in the co-presentation of O'Reilly's and Elson's texts. Instrumental accompaniment—clarinet, bassoon, alto saxophone, piano, violin, viola, violoncello, and double bass—is provided by musicians from the Mahler Chamber Orchestra under Tito Muñoz's direction.

In the work's opening moments, instrument sonorities gradually coalesce, and with the emergence of the overlapping English and German phrases the music suggests an Expressionistic quality, the collective sound calling to mind an equally challenging work such as Schoenberg's 1909 monodrama Erwartung. English is the sole language spoken and sung thereafter, with Hong and Duffy giving committed voice to their respective texts. In some of the sixteen parts, the two appear together, in others one only appears, Duffy differentiating herself by largely singing her parts; Hong, by comparison, oscillates between sprechgesang and sprechstimme in a manner appropriate to O'Reilly's texts. In different places, the music shrieks with despair, the instrumental design mirroring the character of the libretto.

Without wishing to imply that Duffy's performance is in any way secondary, Hong's performance proves particularly affecting in the sensitivity with which she gives voice to O'Reilly. Desperation, determination, hope, and exhaustion are conveyed vividly by the singer's expressions, and as the work moves into its final stages, an even more pronounced slowness sets in as if to suggest the body's weakening during the late stages of the disease.

While it is rewarding, the work is without question uneasy listening, from its subject matter to the uncompromising compositional design; the listener is neither coddled nor indulged but instead challenged at every moment. In being so intimate and by limiting its focus to a small number of individuals, the work also imparts a claustrophobic quality that grows increasingly intense as it advances towards its inexorable end. Bereft of a positive resolution, the piece is tragic yet in dealing so unflinchingly with personal material life-affirming nonetheless. One comes away from the experience appreciative of the gift each of us is granted and made cruelly aware of how arbitrarily it can be taken away.

June 2020