Stereophile has given a five-star rating for both Performance and Sonics to Sean Shibe’s Vesper, with critic Jason Victor Serinus praising the shortest of James Dillon’s 12 Caprices as delightful and charming.
The review credits Shibe as one of the foremost advocates for contemporary music for guitar, noting a discography ranging from Bach to Reich. Serinus highlights the album as an entire collection of world premiere recordings, with Adès, Birtwistle, and Dillon united by the fact that none of them ever played the guitar themselves, and points to Adès’s collaboration with Shibe on the haunting arrangement of Habanera from The Exterminating Angel.
The review also praises Pentatone’s extensive liner notes by Hugh Morris and Jonathan Leathwood as the most detailed he can recall for a solo instrument recital, calling the nine paragraphs on Forgotten Dances progressively fascinating and enveloping.
Vesper is out now on PENTATONE.
