Michael Hersch: Sonatas for Unaccompanied Cello Nos. 1 & 2

"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 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."

"...an intricately constructed world with vast emotional scope."

"Michael Hersch's Sonata No. 1 for Unaccompanied Cello, an arching 35-minute work that amply repays the considerable demands it makes on a cellist's technique and interpretative imagination. Daniel Gaisford's spectacular performance was particularly gripping in the work's extroverted finale."