Images from a Closed Ward

Inspiration for Michael Hersch's tone poem came by way of Michael Mazur's haunting 1960's images of inmates from a Rhode Island psychiatric hospital. The work finds a genuine grain of human experience in a dark, difficult place. The highly regarded Blair String Quartet, who gave the work's premiere and for whom it was written, deliver a definitive account. 'It is the sound of a string quartet playing with rage and inconsolable sadness.'