Europadisc has praised Sean Shibe’s Vesper, calling it an unusually engrossing album whose appeal will extend far beyond guitar aficionados.
The review highlights Adès’s Forgotten Dances, describing the opening movement’s negotiation of the guitar’s open-fourth tuning as music that draws the listener in like an entrapped fly. Europadisc also singles out Shibe’s astonishing virtuosity in the Courante, and his sensitive touch in the Barcarolle, inspired by a voyage the composer’s grandmother took aboard the Queen Mary.
Harrison Birtwistle’s Beyond the White Hand is called the disc’s most substantial piece, an eighteen-minute work melding several sections into a titanic whole, while a collection of Birtwistle miniatures — some composed for his son Silas — is named one of the album’s most immediately attractive features. James Dillon’s 12 Caprices close the disc, described as miniature jewels showing a kinship with Beethoven’s late Bagatelles.
Vesper is out now on PENTATONE.
