If the critic James Gibbons Huneker were still around to write his inimitable critical prose, he would call Sharon Isbin a pianississimist. She gets nuances out of the classical guitar few guitarists since Segovia have matched. Everything she performs bespeaks perfect technical control yet suggests spontaneous improvisation–the art that conceals art.
Her instrument speaks with a thousand colors and those colors were marvelously arrayed at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall on Saturday night, when the American guitar virtuoso presented a recital to close the season’s Segovia Classical Guitar series, sponsored by the Northwestern University School of Music and the Chicago Classical Guitar Society.
The guitar is an intimate instrument, one much better suited to a private salon than a large concert hall. Through her formidable artistry and with the help of her custom-built wireless sound reinforcement system, Isbin succeeded in striking a happy medium. Even when her playing sank to a confidential whisper, her tone had body and impact, and she was free to commune with the audience through her music.
No guitarist is more eager to embrace the many worlds that the classical guitar can bridge. Isbin’s program, including selections from two of her Teldec albums, “Dreams of a World” and “Journey to the Amazon,” offered an engaging tour of classical and folk music.
The guitarist ventured from the Brazilian rainforest to Venezuela, Cuba, Spain, Israel and the Appalachian Mountains. Her artistry is such that she spoke every musical dialect like a native.
Raptly engaged in her playing as much as in her spoken introductions to each piece, the audience clearly enjoyed the ride. The subtleties of her soft dynamics required a degree of close concentration from her listeners, which I’m happy to report they gave her.
Her obviously deep love of the instrument and its traditions is matched by her flawless intonation, clarity of articulation and ability to spin a warm singing line as subtly and sensitively as any classical recital singer.
Rhythmic urgency and a command of a vast color palette seem second nature to her. In Tarrega’s “Recuerdos de la Alhambra” (Memories of the Alhambra) she kept the melody distinct over an accompaniment suggesting multiple strummed guitars.
Her playing was positively hypnotic in Granados’ “Leyenda” (WFMT’s familiar signature music), whose ostinato figure she traced in a crescendo of gathering intensity.
The South American portion of her world tour was particularly noteworthy because of the unfamiliar composers and pieces it turned up. Isbin sang tenderly (Antonio Lauro’s “Waltz No. 3, Natalia”) before launching into an infectiously spirited Brazilian samba by Isaias Savio (“Batucada”) such as one might encounter during carnival time.
I would like to have heard the “rainforest” percussion obbligato to Guadencio Thiago de Mello’s “Uirapuru do Amazonas” but was delighted to discover the piece so beautifully played in solo form.
Isbin has worked with numerous composers to bring new music into the world, and three such works — music written for her or arranged by her — were included in her program.
Leo Brouwer’s absorbing “The Black Decameron” (1981) seasons Afro-Cuban melodies and rhythms with some mild harmonic spice. Isbin’s arrangements of four songs by the Israeli composer Naomi Shemer — her country’s troubadour poet — pay heartfelt tribute to the soil and soul of a people.
Best of all was British composer John Duarte’s five-part suite “Appalachian Dreams” (1996), settings of nine folk songs that cover an extraordinary range of timbres, textures and moods, including a down-and-dirty bluegrass-guitar treatment of “Darling Cora.” All three works were splendidly played, as was Granados’ Spanish Dance No. 5, played as an encore.
