“Music for the 21st Century For sheer musical ingenuity and inventiveness coupled with wide-range sonics, it’s hard to resist the musical adventure that composer PRH [Hirschfield] has concocted on silver disc, also available for download. With unflagging momentum, Hirschfield’s internationally-styled mix of the classic and the modern not only engages, but captivates the listener. It’s really beautiful stuff. There are whiffs of any number of classical composers spanning the centuries, but that doesn’t matter. There’s an individual voice here manipulating electronic and live tonalities that create surprise at every turn, a little motion picture scoring, a little jazz and rock, a little symphony. But what really accounts for the surprise is Hirschfield’s feel for color. Each movement splashes the paints in Fantasia like sequence, sometimes with great delicacy, at other times with imposing seriousness. And suddenly, from nowhere, there is a chordal progression, a motif, that goes right through the heart, a drop of the infinite and the mysterious (try track 13). The piece can be startling, but always agreeable and life-affirming. Plain and simple, Intertwined is a musical treat. Mention must be made of the sonic “picture” and “feel” of the recording. I’m not one who cares a whole lot if I can or cannot pinpoint exactly where an instrument happens to be placed; a general sense is enough for me. What matters to me is how tactile the presentation of the colors and instrumentalities is. The other value that is important for me is the air and warmth that is captured by the engineer. I have a very hard time with dry and airless sonics. Hirschfield is both composer and engineer here. As engineer, his sound is lush, open, and rich with wonderful separation, and for those who find this important, pinpoint acoustics. On this disc, the sound itself is part of the adventure. On a wide-range, high-resolution big system, the whole thing just opens up in Vista Vision. On my Nano, with better than average earbuds, little of the spaciality is lost. Though the music may communicate more intimately, there is thankfully no loss of tingle, no loss of the composer’s sensational tactile facility. In other words, rather deftly, Hirschfield has managed to create a number of adventures here, each one a little different, depending on the system through which one is listening. You don’t want to miss this trip.” Howard Selekman - iTunes (Aug, 2007)

Let’s begin with “virtual catalysts,” my favorite cut from interTwined. Virtual catalysts exercises some sort of bizarre hold over me. I play it repeatedly, as if I were still a teenager with a new favorite album. This piece is something like a blend of Gershwin’s orchestral-jazz “Rhapsody in Blue” with Lalo Schifrin’s theme from Mission Impossible. The song is filled with counter-intuitive shifts in mood and instrumentation, which nonetheless effortlessly work. I can’t get virtual catalysts out of my head. Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue premiered at a concert entitled “An Experiment in Modern Music.” Too bad “experimental” later came to stand for pretentiously odd, discordant and unappealing sounds. Every prh song, on the other hand, is an experiment in the best sense. Prh’s music is filled with unexpected shifts and blends, yet alldesigned to fascinate and please, rather than shock or brag. You might call it “orchestral sampling.” The boldest mixes on this CD are blended with gentler tributes to several folk traditions, like the music of Canada’s Cape Breton. There are a couple of pure percussion pieces as well, harking back to prh’s early work. I’ve been listening to prh for years, and with interTwined, he’s reached a whole new level. Get it. SNK - iTunes (Dec 3, 2007)