Michael Hersch, Composition.
Recipient of many of music's most prestigious honors including First Prize in the American Composers Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship in Composition, the Rome Prize, the Berlin Prize, and the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. Other awards include a Charles Ives Scholarship and three A.S.C.A.P. Morton Gould Young Composer Awards. Mr. Hersch has received commissions from among others the Baltimore Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Oregon Symphony, Dallas Symphony, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and pianist Garrick Ohlsson. For the 2002-03 season Mr. Hersch was named "Composer of the Year" of the Pittsburgh Symphony by Music Director Mariss Jansons; an honor he shares with Krystof Penderecki and Christopher Rouse. Mr. Hersch's Octet for Strings, commissioned by Boris Pergamenschikow and the Kronberg Akademie, was given its premiere at the Schloss Neuhardenberg Festival in Berlin in 2002 and later that year his early Trio No. 1 for violin, clarinet and piano was given its German premiere by the members of the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester. In January 2003 at the Philharmonie in Berlin, The String Soloists of the Berlin Philharmonic performed two of Hersch's works including the Octet and the premiere of his Duo for viola and cello. In the fall of 2004, his work for violin and piano, the wreckage of flowers: twenty-one pieces after poetry and prose of Czeslaw Milosz, which was commissioned by Midori Goto, was given performances by the violinist in Lisbon, London and New York.
As a pianist Mr. Hersch has appeared on the Van Cliburn Foundation’s “Modern at the Modern” Series, the RomaEuropa Festival, the Festival of Contemporary Music “Nuova Consonanza”, American Academy in Berlin Series, Festa Europea della Musica and in New York City at Merkin Concert Hall, the 92nd St. Y – Tisch Center for the Performing Arts, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall and WNYC among others. During the summer of 2001, Mr. Hersch was asked to write and perform a work for the composer Hans Werner Henze on the occasion of Henze's 75th birthday.
Mr. Hersch's principal studies were at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore under Morris Cotel where he received both his B.M. and M.M. degrees.
Additional studies were at the Moscow Conservatory in Russia and as a fellow at the Tanglewood Institute, the Pacific Music Festival and the Norfolk Festival for Contemporary Music.
