Vesper: Music for Guitar by Ades, Birtwistle & James Dillon
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THOMAS ADES / HARRISON BIRTWISTLE / JAMES DILLON
Vesper: Music for Guitar by Ades, Birtwistle & James Dillon
Sean Shibe (guitar)
[ Pentatone / CD ]
Release Date: Friday 17 April 2026
This item is only available to us via Special Order. We should be able to get it to you in 3 - 6 weeks from when you order it.
Sean Shibe's fifth PENTATONE album, Vesper, presents a striking collection of contemporary guitar works by the late Harrison Birtwistle, James Dillon, and Thomas Adès, all composed by musicians who do not play the instrument themselves. Recorded here for the first time.
These recent miniatures explore the guitar's expressive range in profoundly different ways: ritualistic and evocative in Birtwistle, elemental in Dillon, and allusive in Adès. Shibe's interpretations reveal the instrument's extraordinary colour, subtlety, and capacity for transformation, bringing each work to life with imagination and nuance. For some of Birtwistle's pieces, Shibe performs on Sylvette (2021), a guitar made by luthier Simon Ambridge in collaboration with French-British artist Lydia Corbett. A muse to Pablo Picasso - who was himself an important influence for several of Birtwistle's works on this album - Corbett also inspired Picasso's celebrated Sylvette series. Modelled on the small, responsive instruments of the Andalusian luthier Antonio de Torres, the guitar features Corbett's artwork on its body, adding a visual and symbolic layer to the performance.
Shibe is a former BBC New Generation Artist, a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship 2012 winner, a Royal Philharmonic Society 2018 Young Artist Award winner, a multi-Grammy nominee, and the recipient of the 2022 Leonard Bernstein Award. His recordings have won BBC Music Magazine and Gramophone awards.
"Composers know how difficult it is to write for the guitar without sounding Spanish. In one of two hefty booklet notes to this equally heavyweight album (the other is by Hugh Morris), Jonathan Leathwood posits that idea and its converse: that even distinctive composers often don't sound like themselves when writing for the instrument.
Perhaps, given the seriousness of intent behind most of the music he has chosen for 'Vesper', Sean Shibe would rather you didn't think of this as 'a guitar album' at all. But for non-guitarists it's almost impossible not to do so, and the beneficial end of that particular equation is when you find yourself marvelling at what Shibe can do with two hands and six strings in the space of one bar - the micro-achievement of his articulation, colouring and mastering of that fragile resonance; the macro-achievement the depths he plumbs, on his instrument, with these miniature stories." Gramophone Bookmark recording
Tracks:
THOMAS ADES
Forgotten Dances
The Exterminating Angel
- Habanera
HARRISON BIRTWISTLE
Berceuse de Jeanne (arr. Forbes Henderson for guitar)
Beyond the White Hand: Construction with Guitar Player
Guitar and White Hand
Je sui aussi
Oockooing Bird (arr. Forbes Henderson for guitar)
Sad Song (arr. Forbes Henderson for guitar)
Sleep Song
JAMES DILLON
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