BBC Music Magazine has given a five-star review to Sean Shibe’s Vesper, with critic Anne Templar calling the album highly considered, showing depth and great musical insight.
The review highlights Thomas Adès’s Forgotten Dances and Habanera as seeming to conjure sonorities hitherto unrealised, crediting this partly to Adès’s familiarity with the guitar’s sources of inspiration, with timbres of bells, trills, and harmonics reminiscent of the marimba running throughout. Templar also praises Harrison Birtwistle’s music for journeying down anticipated idiosyncratic routes before revealing itself as the collection unfolds, with the composer’s five miniatures ultimately expressing fatherly love and honesty.
James Dillon’s 12 Caprices close the album, described as leaving little more than a flavour of deliciousness, beautifully expressed by Shibe, whose recording is said to provide a template for guitarists studying these works.
Vesper is out now on PENTATONE.
