[1] Born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Reston, Virginia, Hersch was introduced to classical music at the age of 18 by his younger brother Jamie, who showed him a videotape of Georg Solti conducting Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.
[4] His first success came when Marin Alsop selected Hersch's Elegy as winner of the American Composers Prize, and conducted it at Lincoln Center in New York in 1997.
Hersch's earliest recordings appeared on the Vanguard Classics label, the first released in 2003, with performances by the composer and the String Soloists of the Berlin Philharmonic.
The second, with Hersch performing his own work in addition to music of Morton Feldman, Wolfgang Rihm, and Josquin des Prez, was selected by The Washington Post and Newsday as among the notable recordings of 2004-05.
[6] Described by The New York Times as "viscerally gripping and emotionally transformative music … claustrophobic and exhilarating at once, with moments of sublime beauty nestled inside thickets of dark virtuosity",[7] Hersch's work "marries a volcanic New World energy to a deeply skeptical, often angst-ridden spiritual climate."
(Andrew Clark, Financial Times)[8] In 2014, Hersch's first work for the stage, On the Threshold of Winter (2012), premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Fishman Space by the NUNC ensemble (Miranda Cuckson, director) with Ah Young Hong as the soloist.
[15] Other collaborations include those with Dutch contemporary music group Ensemble Klang, violinist Miranda Cuckson, and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.