Synopsis

On today’s date in 2002, Mariss Jansons led the Pittsburg Symphony in the premiere performance of the Symphony No. 2 written by 32-year-old American composer Michael Hersch.

Hardly a child prodigy, he was introduced to classical music at 18 by his brother Jamie, who showed him a videotape of Georg Solti conducting Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. That experience shook him. “It scrambled everything. That’s when I knew that I was to be a composer... My whole life started over at that moment,” Hersch recalled.

He certainly made up for lost time, exhibiting an uncanny ability to master both the piano and the intricacies of contemporary compositional techniques in less than a decade.

His first success as a composer came when his Elegy for Strings won a major prize and was conducted by Marin Alsop at Lincoln Center in New York in 1997. Since then, his works have been commissioned and performed by many other leading orchestras and performers.

Hersch’s Symphony No. 2 has no stated program, but it was composed shortly after the events of September 11, 2001, and knowing that, it’s hard to disassociate the score’s violent opening and subsequent elegiac mood from that tragic moment in American history.

Music Played in Today's Program

Michael Hersch (b. 1971): Symphony No. 2; Bournemouth Symphony; Marin Alsop, conductor; Naxos 8.559281