Michael Hersch: Sonatas Nos. 1 & 2 for Unaccompanied Cello 
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Michael Hersch: Complete Works for Solo String Instruments - Volume I
Sonatas Nos. 1 & 2 for Unaccompanied Cello
Label: Vanguard Classics (MCS-CD-104)
Daniel Gaisford, cello
Release Date: 2009
This disc is the first in an ambitious three-part series surveying Michael Hersch's complete solo works for strings. The current recording focuses on the demanding early sonatas for unaccompanied cello, both of which were written while the composer was still in his twenties. The second installment, to be released in 2010, will feature his music for violin, performed by violinist Miranda Cuckson. The final installment, scheduled for a 2011 release, will comprise unaccompanied works for double bass and viola.
1. Sonata No. 1 - Movement 1 (excerpt) 
2. Sonata No. 1 - Movement 3 (excerpt)
4. Sonata No. 2 - Movement 5 (excerpt)
"I first became acquainted with Michael Hersch’s music through his monumental solo piano work The Vanishing Pavilions. The pieces recorded here adjust Hersch’s large and large-hearted soundworld to the somewhat more intimate and introverted genre of the unaccompanied sonata for cello. The genre has a long and distinguished history, characterized by big works that show off the expressive range of the instrument (and the player) as well as the virtuosic possibilities almost inherent in solo string playing. Hersch is solidly in that tradition here, with pieces that probe the nature of cello playing in the context of the composer’s very personal post 20th-century neo-modernism. The music is characterized by meditative lyricism or mysticism, punctuated by aggressively angular and rhythmically biting phrases. Daniel Gaisford plays these difficult (in every sense of the word) and supremely rewarding pieces with seemingly limitless technique and a musical personality as strong as Hersch’s. Their collaboration makes for an exciting and provocative musical experience." -- Sequenza21.com
(four stars) "... an intricately constructed world with vast emotional scope." -- The Philadelphia Inquirer
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