Sean Shibe: Vesper
Pentatone

Sean Shibe's latest Pentatone release is distinguished by remarkable guitar playing, naturally, but recommending it even more is the set-list he assembled for it. Alternating between pieces by Thomas Adès (b. 1971) and Harrison Birtwistle (1934-2022) before concluding with one by James Dillon (b. 1950), Vesper is the kind of audacious statement we've come to expect from this pioneering guitarist, whose colourfully painted “Sylvette” guitar is as distinctive as his playing. The guitar isn't just for show either: created by Simon Ambridge in collaboration with artist Lydia Corbett, a one-time muse of Picasso's and the subject of more than sixty of his works, the instrument's hand-painted surfaces draw a connecting line to Birtwistle's Picasso-inspired pieces. As Vesper shows, Shibe's an enthusiastic advocate for contemporary composers and has premiered many a new work; at the same time, this Guitar Professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama is also comfortable performing canonic pieces from centuries past.

Recorded at Midlothian's Crichton Collegiate Chapel in June and August 2025, Vesper upholds his commitment to contemporary material. Bolstering its value is the fact it features an hour-plus of world premiere recordings as well as Birtwistle's complete works for the guitar. Up first, however, is Adès's Forgotten Dances, the composer's first major piece for solo guitar. A probing examination of the instrument's possibilities and its capacity for articulating enigmatic sound worlds, the suite presents six strikingly textured settings whose titles couple clarification of a type of music (courante, berceuse) with either an image (spider, swift) or figure (Ernst, Berlioz). At times volatile, “Overture – Queen of the Spiders” is an aptly intricate concoction that follows its opening chordal flourish with darting movements, quivers, and criss-crossings, one passage in particular suggesting a spider attacking a fly trapped within its web and readying it for consumption. Dreamier by comparison is “Berceuse – The Paradise of Thebes,” whose strums, harmonics, trills, and gentle rocking motion lend it the character of a soothing cradle song. Shifting gears again, “Courante – Here was a swift (for Max Ernst)” creates the impression of two guitarists playing, one aggressively strumming as the other fires off rapid single-note patterns. Chiming bell sounds are evoked during “Carillon de Ville (for Hector Berlioz),” though the increasingly clangorous material seems to fragment as it progresses, after which “Vesper (for Henry Purcell)” concludes the work with an affecting, hymn-like statement whose stately glow Shibe renders with finesse. The second Adès work, “Habanera,” comes from The Exterminating Angel, his opera based on Luis Buñuel's 1962 film, and naturally exudes a Spanish quality in its flamenco-like guitar shadings, percussive flourishes, and habanera allusions.

The album's centrepiece is Birtwistle's Beyond the White Hand: Construction with Guitar Player, an eighteen-minute odyssey that started out as a series of miniatures that only later were assembled into a continuous whole. Opening ruminatively, the material slowly blossoms into a vivid landscape punctuated by crepuscular melodies, ominous flourishes and strums, rapid runs, and extreme contrasts of tempo and dynamics. Percussive knocks on the guitar body usher in a new, rhythmically charged episode, after which passages featuring harmonics, hockets, and ostinatos arise in turn. Complementing the larger work is the compact Guitar and White Hand, written by the composer for his guitar-playing son Silas and titled after a Picasso painting from 1927. Five further miniatures appear, each a one- to two-minute portal into the composer's unusual musical sensibility (three started out as piano pieces and are presented here in transcriptions by Forbes Henderson). The first in the set is Oockooing Bird, a lovely little piece he wrote when he was but sixteen and is his earliest acknowledged score. A gentle lilting rhythm animates Sleep Song, written when Silas was around ten years old, while the also lullaby-like Berceuse de Jeanne carries the instruction that it be played at the tempo of a “baby's heart.” Perpetuating the intimate tone is the solemn reverie Sad Song, after which the rapidly flowing Je sui aussi brings this mini-set to a quick close.

Taut and highly compressed miniatures that last no more than a minute at a time (sometimes half that), Dillon's 12 Caprices were written quickly and exemplify economy and immediacy in equal measure. A variety of techniques, moods, and contrasts are explored, with some parts lyrical and others sharp and aggressive. Single-note phrases collide with arpeggiated chords in enigmatic settings that alternately soothe and unsettle. Whereas one caprice might be so short as to seem a poetic haiku, another seems to last long enough for a complete story to be told.

May 2026