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Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
Meet the guitar hero going electric at the Proms
Sean Shibe is one of the most outrageously talented guitarists of the classical music world, able to bridge the divide between electric and acoustic. But that didn't stop some of his audience walking out when he played a 60-minute solo at the Wigmore Hall in 2020. They had been warned: the composer Georges Lentz's Ingwe is meant to be played 'painfully loud'. People wore brightly coloured earplugs. Shibe wore a hot-pink jumpsuit. But London's foremost classical recital space is more accustomed to a Wagner transcription than a wah-wah pedal, and as the music grew, so did the number of empty seats. The reviews, however, were raves: five stars from The Times, for a performance that induced 'a state of near-nauseous confusion mixed with cathartic ecstasy'. For the past decade Shibe has been transforming artistic expectations of the electric guitar. 'Classical guitarists are used to dealing with an instrument where the lightness is its power,' he explains. 'When it comes to the electric guitar the opposite is true — you can add distortion, reverb, whammy bar.' Crucially, you can also be heard above an orchestra. • Ema Nikolovska and Sean Shibe review — an Orlando-inspired concert Such effects are largely unknown in classical music — something Shibe says composers find liberating. His second album, softLOUD, which drew on music first written for Scottish lute and bagpipe, blasted open a new path for classical guitar music. Plenty of guitarists had proved the acoustic instrument could reach beyond its classical soundworld; some, like the jazz guitarist Pat Metheny, have made a compelling case for its amplified sister. But until Shibe no one was doing both. As well as electric guitar he is capable of performing the most light-fingered work from the baroque era. Born in Edinburgh in 1992, Shibe took up the guitar after his mother, a Japanese ceramicist, picked up an inexpensive instrument from a shop near the pottery studio she runs with her husband. His progress was swift. Having been the only guitar student at the City of Edinburgh Music School, he moved to Aberdeen City Music School, going on to the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and becoming, at 19, its youngest graduate. At next week's BBC Proms he will perform a new concerto for electric guitar by Mark Simpson, titled ZEBRA (or, 2-3-74: The Divine Invasion of Philip K Dick). Simpson, the composer of an acclaimed violin concerto championed by Nicola Benedetti, was inspired by the sci-fi writer whose books became Hollywood blockbusters such as Minority Report and Blade Runner — even if, Shibe points out, 'Dick's own take was often more gritty, paranoid and hallucinatory'. In 1974 the author attributed a series of visions — featuring Jesus, pink light and ancient Rome — to a spiritual source he referred to as 'Zebra'. • 'Gay music isn't just Kylie — it's Tchaikovsky and Britten too' Shibe is full of praise for the composer, who has also added a drum kit and synthesizer. 'It takes somebody like Mark to recalibrate the expectations we have of the instrument for it to function alongside a symphony orchestra [in this case the BBC Philharmonic and the conductor Anja Bihlmaier]. There are a lot of pieces that introduce the guitar to the orchestra in a hackneyed way.' Shibe cites Yngwie Malmsteen's 1998 Concerto Suite for Electric Guitar and Orchestra in E flat minor as an example. 'If you're a hypertonal pop musician you can't necessarily play a concerto — and I probably couldn't be in a rock band,' Shibe says. One rare exception is Jonny Greenwood, the Radiohead guitarist who has composed for the Proms and, like Shibe, recorded Steve Reich's Electric Counterpoint. 'There are very few Jonny Greenwoods,' Shibe says. True, but there might be even fewer Shibes. A week after the concerto Shibe is the face of one of the BBC Proms excursions to Gateshead — the concert is dubbed 'Sean Shibe and Friends' — in which he will play James Dillon's 12 Caprices in Gateshead. I saw him perform them at the Aldeburgh Festival a few weeks ago, where the sparse melodies held the room transfixed — until we were all jolted back to earth by a message alert. It seemed to come from Shibe's iPad, though he vehemently denies this. In the end it didn't matter: his subsequent performance of Le Marteau sans maître – Boulez's 1955 setting of René Char's surrealist poetry — was far more memorable, folding in and out of itself as the patterns become increasingly complex. • 268 Years of Reverb — an organ epic by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood Headlines involving Shibe inevitably invoke the Noughties video game Guitar Hero, in which players mimic rock solos via a console. In September he will open a residency at the Southbank Centre in London with Oliver Leith's Doom and the Dooms, a composition for electric guitar, keyboard, percussion and strings, in which the guitarist performs a concert as part of the titular band — only recast in a classical format. 'It's more of a woozy memory of a rock band,' Shibe says of a style that recalls Leith's opera Last Days, which depicted the last days of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain. He'll also perform music by Bach, Thomas Adès and Reich, plus Rodrigo's Aranjuez concerto — a touchstone of the classical repertoire — with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Marin Alsop. His autumn hit list also includes a London Symphony Orchestra performance (Oct 19) conducted by Adès, of Poul Ruders's Paganini Variations. It's the full menu of a modern virtuoso — or a bona fide guitar hero. Sean Shibe performs at the BBC Proms on Jul 22 (Royal Albert Hall, London) and Jul 27 (Glasshouse, Gateshead). Both concerts are live on Radio 3/BBC Sounds
Spectator
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
Alfred Brendel was peerless – but he wasn't universally loved
In middle age Alfred Brendel looked disconcertingly like Eric Morecambe – but, unlike the comedian in his legendary encounter with André Previn, he played all the right notes in the right order. OK, so perhaps I'm selling the maestro a bit short: I do think Brendel, who died on 17 June at the age of 94, was a peerless interpreter of the Austro-German repertoire, and for a time in the 1970s had a better claim than any other pianist to 'own' the Beethoven and late Schubert piano sonatas. But some of the media tributes have been embarrassingly uncritical, implying that Brendel was universally loved. He wasn't, and he didn't want to be. The Austrian maestro – born in Moravia, but then so was Mahler and no one thinks of him as Czech – lived in Hampstead for more than half a century. Even those who loved him found his cleverness intimidating. 'I don't think Alfred has ever had an unoriginal thought,' said his friend Isaiah Berlin. In the Guardian last week Simon Rattle described Brendel's 'occasional sharp edges' as 'deeply loveable'. To quote our late Queen, recollections may vary. A young pianist once found himself sitting next to the great man at a dinner. Brendel congratulated him on his debut album of German classical repertoire and asked him what he was working on now. He replied that he was planning a recital by a composer Brendel disliked. At which point the charm evaporated and the young man was ignored for the rest of the evening. Rattle also wrote that Brendel's humour was rooted in 'an almost surreal amusement at the world around him'. You can read that two ways, both valid. Brendel was exasperated by stupidity and waspishly funny about it. I remember a Wigmore Hall lecture in which he eviscerated 'historically informed' performers who, among other crimes, ended every phrase with a sighing diminuendo. His artfully chosen musical examples made them sound like pretentious morons. But that word 'surreal' is also crucial. This most professorial of performers, whose essay on 'Form and Psychology in Beethoven's Piano Sonatas' is a masterpiece of conventional analysis, was an unlikely authority on dada and kitsch. His thick horn-rimmed spectacles were focused on the little absurdities of life, some of which delighted rather than annoyed him. According to one of his friends, he collected passport photos abandoned in the slots of do-it-yourself booths because their subjects were so horrified by their boggle-eyed stares and wobbly jowls. Actually, Brendel himself famously pulled faces – sometimes deliberately, mugging for the camera, but more often unintentionally, as he produced a series of alarming grimaces in search of a perfect cantabile line. He recorded three cycles of the Beethoven sonatas. The first, from the early 1960s, is the snappiest and most secure but marred by Vox's lousy sound. The second is his analogue Philips cycle, which plumbs greater depths but adopts risk-averse tempi; the normally indulgent Penguin Guide said it rarely matched the authority of Brendel in the concert hall. That must have stung, for in his digital Philips cycle the pianist included live performances, including a Hammerklavier praised for its 'uncompromising impulse and coherence' but also damned for its dullness. The critics couldn't agree about Brendel's Beethoven or Schubert sonatas, though his Mozart concertos with Mackerras were generally acclaimed and nearly everyone loved his Haydn; here there was a spontaneity that hinted at the quirkiness of Brendel the raconteur and author of madcap poetry. But, to my ears, only one piece of music captured all the facets of his personality, and fittingly it was the piano masterpiece that he revered above all others – the Diabelli Variations. If there is such a thing as surreal Beethoven, it's found in these 33 excursions from Anton Diabelli's catchy but trivial waltz. Their vast range of emotions, wrote Brendel, ranged from the lyrical and depressive to the brilliantly extroverted, while 'at least eight of the variations laugh or giggle; some others take on an air of the grotesque, of diablerie – if the pun may be permitted'. To my mind, Brendel's live, white-hot 1976 Diabellis at the Festival Hall capture their moods with a dexterity unmatched by any other interpreter. This isn't to denigrate his other recordings. Listening again to his Beethoven and Schubert, I'm irritated by the carping of the critics; patches of overthinking don't detract from a sense of rightness, of channelling the composer. And how many pianists could write so penetratingly in German and English about literature, philosophy and the nooks and crannies of 20th-century culture – from the phonetic poetry of Kurt Schwitters to the cartoons of Gary Larson? It's an astonishing legacy from which, frustratingly, just one piece of the jigsaw is missing: those passport photos.
Spectator
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
The Renaissance master who rescued polyphonic music
Last month I watched conductor Harry Christophers blow through what sounded like an arthritic harmonica but in fact was a pure-toned pitch pipe, which handed the singers of his vocal group the Sixteen their starting notes. Then the Kyrie from Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina's Missa Regina coeli unfolded inside the resonant splendour of St James's Church in Mayfair and, 500 years after his birth, I grasped why Palestrina, maestro di cappella of St Peter's Basilica in Rome from 1551-5, still has the capacity to surprise. Christophers and the Sixteen are celebrating this greatest of the late Renaissance composers in his anniversary year with three concerts promoted by the Wigmore Hall but held at St James's: this music lives or dies by the acoustic in which it is heard. That first concert returned me to my days as a music student trying my best to unpick, then put back together, Palestrina scores, always with a sinking feeling that I might as well be unscrambling Einstein's theory of relativity; this was advanced mathematics, not music. The point was never made that Palestrina laid down rules because he had listened carefully to the acoustics of churches not dissimilar to St James's, then conceived a compositional approach that led him to create music of unfailing luminosity. A second anniversary concert on 18 June will focus on Palestrina's music depicting the Last Supper, and then there's a gap until the final instalment of the series on 22 October. The very idea that anyone attending these concerts might have heard weak links in his robust chains of sound would have filled Palestrina with dread and that's where those rules came in. In a Palestrina score every note in every chord needed to have its function; notes had to arrive from somewhere and land somewhere else. Doubling the same dissonance across different voices – which would have temporarily dimmed a chord – was banned. Notes moving in consecutive sequence between different voices – diluting the rich texture by having one part existing as a mini-me shadow of another – was similarly banned. It's a checklist of compositional terms and conditions that goes on and on, but out of this intense discipline Palestrina found enormous creative freedom. Lassus and Victoria – also associated with Rome and the papal chapel – composed magnificent music, but no composer of the period wrote as prolifically and with such consistent finesse as Palestrina. He matters historically, too, because, without his brilliance, Renaissance choral music might have been allowed to wither away. Growing up in Rome, he had his first musical training in the city, and the Catholic church formed him as composer and thinker. By the time of the Council of Trent – which, beginning in 1545, was intended to give church orthodoxy a spring-clean in the light of the Protestant Reformation – the fear was that church music had become too fancy for its own good. People were in danger of enjoying the sound of the music at the expense of engaging with its liturgical texts. Deep in the mythology is the suggestion that, in 1564, Palestrina wrote his Pope Marcellus Mass in response to a papal request for something that might prove otherwise. Everything came out right. Palestrina's pristine vocal lines didn't strain any voices and, most importantly, allowed for easy comprehension of the text. Had he failed, the church might have stopped polyphonic music altogether – but instead his piece became the prototype for choral music of which the church could approve. For his efforts, Palestrina became known as 'the saviour of music'. Out of this intense discipline Palestrina found enormous creative freedom Today Pope Marcellus Mass, and his Stabat Mater setting, remain Palestrina's most popular and often performed works. When we spoke a few weeks after that first anniversary concert, Harry Christophers was keen to emphasise just how much Palestrina exists – 'there are 104 masses, but only three or four of them are regularly performed'. There are currently nine Palestrina CDs on the Sixteen's own Coro label, with more in the pipeline. But even Christophers took time to work Palestrina out. 'For years I didn't touch his music,' he confides, somewhat to my surprise, 'because as a conductor you want to interpret. This music was intended originally to adorn the liturgy, but now we're taking it out of its liturgical context, presenting it as great music. Palestrina is the master craftsman and I couldn't impose myself on it too much. I had to learn to keep out the way and let the music speak for itself.' Soprano Kirsty Hopkins, who has been a mainstay of the Sixteen for the past 16 years, remains in awe of Palestrina's empathy for voices. 'He tops my list of composers who make singing incredibly easy,' she tells me. 'He understood instinctively how long a phrase can be and how much breath you need in between phrases, so as not to be forced to snatch a sneaky breath. This means we can focus entirely on giving texts their meaning.' As a listener the challenge, and indeed the joy, of Palestrina lies in tracking how his weave of interlinking voices, moving inexorably through time, keeps turning on its axes. It's tempting to categorise Palestrina as a 'classical composer', forgetting that he was writing two centuries before Haydn and Mozart, and that his musical vocabulary inhabits whole other worlds. Abrupt shifts of harmony and key changes, the narrative juice of 18th- and 19th-century music, are entirely absent from Palestrina. His rhythms roll out of the stresses and inclines of liturgical text; you'll never hear dislocating rhythmic jolts or, heaven forfend, any beat-shifting syncopations. The fascination lies almost entirely in following the network of association between intertwining vocal lines as they imitate each other's paths. But Palestrina often feels like a kindred spirit to the free flow of sound that emerged from 20th-century composers such as Cage and Ligeti. The stylistic distance from the dominant 18th- and 19th-century compositional traditions has often led to nods of recognition between the early-music and modern-music ghettos. Think about how that supposed 1950s enfant terrible Peter Maxwell Davies built compositions around Henry Purcell, or of David Munrow – the nearest thing the British early-music scene had to a rock star – recording Rattlebone and Ploughjack in 1976 with Ashley Hutchings of folksy rock group Fairport Convention. Christophers helps clarify the reasons for this closeness. Ligeti – who heard music as continuums of jittery, snaking texture – often noted in his scores that bar lines were strictly for the practicality of rehearsal so that musicians could find their place. Palestrina didn't use bars either, albeit because the convention didn't exist. Christophers tells me that modern editions come with added bar lines, but merely as a rehearsal guide, which leads me to ask about the material the Sixteen use to perform from. Is finding reliable sources the stuff of nightmares? 'In Victorian times, editors would take out clashes between major and minor chords, which was a real feature of his style, assuming they were a mistake,' he winces. 'Modern editions tend to be very good though. Some things singers would have done naturally back in the day, like automatically flattening or sharpening notes, because they knew the language of the music, mean that sometimes we must experiment: did he want A flat there? Or an A? But the thing I say to the choir more than anything else – never become a slave to the bar line. The shape of the words, that's what matters.' Kirsty Hopkins reminds me that this music has been part of the DNA of British choirs for centuries and that the key to successful Palestrina is twofold: breath and blend. Choirs like the Sixteen do use vibrato, but not in the manner of a Wagnerian singer. To hear that all-important weave, their vibrato must be finely mingled. 'Breathing properly means making sure we're heading for the right moment in a word. A word like 'Hallelujah', measured against the bar line could sound very square, but the point is to get the word stress right.' There's a whole PhD thesis to be written, you feel, on breath control in Palestrina, but both Christophers and Hopkins agree with my hunch that if singers are breathing in a natural way, determined by the words, then the music can start to breathe naturally across its structure. And Palestrina's music maps out the dimensions of those majestic acoustics, testament to, depending on how you hear it, the glory of physics – or God.
Irish Independent
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Blackwater Valley Opera Festival: What's still available to book
Understandably, this performance of a mainly Irish cast, supported by the Irish Chamber Orchestra, is completely sold out, but for those who didn't catch the early opera treats, there is still time to dive in to the event, which runs from May 27 to June 2. With 23 events, two full opera productions, and over 100 world-class artists performing in ticketed and free events across 12 unique venues, it is the most ambitious programme in the festival's 15-year history, say organisers. There are performances in a castle, a cathedral and a 19th century farmhouse, as well as in historic homes. The festival will also bring live performances to Cappoquin, Dungarvan, Stradbally, Youghal, and Castlemartyr. So if you haven't yet planned your trip, here are some hidden gems you can still get to see. Opera in the cathedral Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, featuring Paula Murrihy, Dean Murphy, Kelli-Ann Masterson, and the Irish Baroque Orchestra, will showcase the expressive beauty of baroque opera, offering a striking contrast in musical style and atmosphere across the festival. Tuesday, May 27's showing still has limited tickets available. It takes place at St Carthage's Cathedral, Lismore, Waterford. Tickets €20-€40. Concerts at Dromore Yard A romantic, semi-restored 19th-century farmyard on the banks of the River Blackwater sets the scene for two of the festival's most anticipated performances, headlined by internationally celebrated Irish mezzo-sopranos Paula Murrihy and Niamh O'Sullivan. Ms O'Sullivan's Where Birds Do Sing recital with pianist Gary Beecher from 3pm on Sunday, June 1 promises to be a standout moment – following their acclaimed appearance at Wigmore Hall, London. Some limited €35-€60 tickets are still available, but you will have to be quick. Paula Murrihy returns to the same venue for the festival finale, Baroque Hits, on Monday, June 2 from 8pm, performing with the Irish Baroque Orchestra under the baton of Nicholas McGegan. A handful of €25 tickets remain. ADVERTISEMENT Free outdoor recitals Throughout the week, a series of intimate classical performances will take place in historic homes and venues across the Blackwater Valley. The programme highlights include Shakespeare in Music, The Tinker and the Fairy, and a special poetry and music recital honouring George Bernard Shaw, with tickets starting at €25 for unallocated seating. However, there are also four lunchtime recitals that are free to attend on Tuesday, May 27 at Millenium Park in Lismore, on Friday, May 30 at at Walton Park in Dungarven, on Saturday, May 31 at Green Park in Youghal and on Sunday, June 1 at Castlemartyr Resort. They all start at 12pm and run for one hour, with the exception of Castlematyr, which starts at 1pm. Although there is no charge, attendees do need to book online at Witness the talent of tomorrow The festival supports emerging talent through four bursary awards, recognising exceptional promise in young artists and performers. This year's recipients will appear alongside Irish Heritage award winners in live performances during the week. Tickets for the recital of soprano Aimee Kearney and pianist Georgina Cassidy on Wednesday, May 28 from 1pm at Tourin House in Waterford are still available at €25 plus booking fee. Indulge in fine food – or a picnic Food lovers can look forward to a feast of flavours throughout the week, including a Midsummer-inspired menu created by celebrity TV chef Eunice Power, served in tents on the grounds of Lismore Castle. This three-course Italian-style meal is sold-out on Wednesday, May 28, but you can book for Friday, Saturday or Sunday. Dinner starts at 5.15pm and costs €85 per person for the standard menu or €75 for vegan. A booking fee is also added. Pre-show gourmet picnics are also available to order for Lismore Castle on Wednesday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday, or at Dromore Yard on Sunday and Monday. There's also an option at that location to pay a corkage fee of €10 to bring your own picnic. At Lismore Castle the picnic boxes showcase Comeragh lamb, Clare Island salmon and Irish cheeses, with a plant-based option also available. Both cost €55 plus a booking fee. At Dromore Yard, the menu includes either a chicken or falafel mezze costing €45 plus booking fee. Those heading to recitals can avail from some set menu deals at local eateries like The Saucy Hen in Villierstown, Barron's in Cappoquin, and Fuller's Bistro and The Vault Café in Lismore. All menus and prices are on the festival's website, where you can book meals.
Times
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Stile Antico review — classics and rarities in a majestic birthday party
It doesn't seem long ago that Stile Antico were the new kids on the block, challenging established professional choirs with a revolutionary tactic: no conductor at the front deciding how everything should sound. In fact, it's been 20 years since Stile Antico gave the first of its 600 concerts to date. This Wigmore Hall programme was an epic celebration of that anniversary. Stretched over nearly three hours, it comprised 14 substantial Renaissance pieces, two commissioned works and onstage interviews with all 12 current members by Radio 3's Hannah French. When former members joined in at the end for an exquisite singalong of The Silver Swan, it did feel rather like an episode of This Is Your Life. Interspersed with the banter, however, was
