Review: Chanter with Sean Shibe and the Royal Northern Sinfonia strings at Sage Two
Huw Lewis reports back from 'one big experiment' at The Glasshouse
This concert was one big experiment, Sinfonia artistic partner Maria Włoszczowska said.
The fact it drew a crowd of 250 plus to hear six modern pieces – four of them written in the last 10 years – shows North East audiences will take risks.
Well done Maria. Let’s have more experiments.
Guitarist Sean Shibe was a big part of the draw: An intense and versatile player returning to Gateshead after last summer’s Proms and shifting from acoustic to electric via an olde world lute during the course of a Sunday afternoon when recent downpours often seemed to drip through onto the musical page
Two contrasting pieces written for Shibe bookended the show. Thomas Ades’ Forgotten Dances stretched the possibilities of sound from a solo guitar in new directions. Cassandra Miller’s concerto Chanter paid more direct homage to the heritage of the instrument with gentle echoes of flamenco, Tudor England and finally the Mississippi Delta as Shibe’s dreamy slide playing lulled us to a gentle conclusion.
Finding the right balance seems to have proved the one challenge in the experiment, not least in deciding what order to place six individually fascinating pieces to ensure a satisfying whole.
The music had been switched around from the printed programme at the last minute and a bonus seventh piece by English Renaissance lutenist John Dowland thrown in after the interval to set the mood for Gavin Bryars’ After The Requiem, which was otherwise the old boy of the gig being from the actual 1990s, just before soloist Shibe was born.
Balance was also an occasional issue with the sound; Shibe’s lute struggled to compete with the modern strings semi-circled around him in the Dowland, and guest artist Bishi’s tanpura drone continuum got a little lost in Jonny Greenwood’s Water.
There were no such issues in the Sinfonia string sections special during Ades’ woozy Shanty - Over The Sea, bringing to mind nothing more than a rainy afternoon in an Eyemouth local studded by too many whisky chasers, and before that Oliver Leith’s Honey Siren, its equal highlight amid the recurring theme of dripping, flowing, constant water.