Sean Shibe

The first of three Norfolk and Norwich Festival performances by guitarist Sean Shibe was a varied and compelling recital at the Maddermarket Theatre. During a couple of lengthy spoken introductions/interludes Shibe sketched out an intriguing narrative of an ongoing – occasionally harmonious, more often not – dialogue between composers and performers that centred on sometime neglected works. The first of these was Frank Martin’s Quatre pièces brèves pour guitare which the Swiss composer dedicated to Andrés Sergovia, but which the Spanish guitarist rejected - Shibe recounts a story of Sergovia apparently crossing the street to avoid Martin. The four pieces make up a subtle, intriguing opening.
Shibe follows this with his own arrangement of Bach’s Cello Suite No 1 in G, a work so ubiquitous that including it in a programme of ‘forgotten’ works might initially seem bizarre. However, as the festival programme makes clear: it’s thought that the first performance of these pieces took place over a century after they were written.
Shibe explains that it was Julian Bream who – approximately three decades after they were written and ignored – revived Martin’s Quatre pieces, ensuring that they did not remain forgotten. He goes on to recount an anecdote about a planned composition by Harrison Birtwistle for Bream failing to materialise on account of difference of opinion about the fee for the piece. Birtwistle was eventually commissioned by Bream to compose a 2014’s Beyond the White Hand, but it is some brief earlier works (Oockooing Bird, Sad Song and Berceuse de Jeanne) which Shibe performs tonight. These provide a diverting interlude between the Bach and what turns out to be the focal point of the evening’s performance: Thomas Adès’ six part Forgotten Dances, a work that Shibe clearly holds in high esteem.
After experiencing his performance it’s easy to see why. This is complex, challenging music that, at it’s best, is totally captivating. The piece – which is Adès’ first composition for a solo instrument other than the keyboard - was premiered less than two years ago by Shibe. He has since toured Forgotten Dances extensively and gives every impression of wanting to continue to do this for some time. The captivating twenty-minute piece is remarkably varied. The highlight for me was the third part: Here was a Swift (for Max Ernst) which demanded some astounding virtuosity from Shibe.
Concluding the main set with the Adès (Shibe returns for a brief encore) provides a neat conclusion to the narrative begun during Shibe’s spoken introduction just over an hour earlier. We’ve moved from the dysfunctional musical relationship between Martin and Sergovia to a thriving, productive understanding between composer and performer. All in all, an engrossing, excellently programmed, performed and contextualised, selection.