münden - entzüngeln: Music of György Kurtág, Michael Hersch, and Enno Poppe

Cover Image: Sculpture by Christopher Cairns

Soprano Ah Young Hong, bassoonist Ben Roidl-Ward, and violinist Will Overcash present a program of chamber music that delves into emotional experiences to find meaning both in intensity and in stillness. The program centers around three new works by American composer Michael Hersch. His trio, sapped from me broken – three songs after texts of Anja Utler sets texts from the German poet ‘s volume münden–entzüngeln (engulf–enkindle), exploring close harmonies and rapid shifts of color and texture. Hersch wrote two companion pieces for the program: across … in grief and detail – eleven figures for bassoon and violin, which spans a range of expression from crystalline to guttural and requires the violinist to sing throughout, and the trio Misere mei Domine – Fantasia on Music of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck and Robert Schumann, which weaves together haunting materials from the Dutch and German composers. The program is completed by Holz, a solo bassoon work by German composer Enno Poppe, and selections from György Kurtag’s Kafka Fragments, miniatures that set German-language snippets from the Bohemian author’s diaries, personal correspondences, and other unpublished writings for soprano and violin.