Music review: Sean Shibe meets the Dunedin Consort, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

Sean Shibe’s world premiere of Cassandra Miller’s Chanter was one of several contemporary works for guitar and string ensemble in this performance that reached back to the Renaissance for inspiration. In particular, Miller drew on the smallpipes tradition with echoes of the chanter drone and the flutter of the timbral trill woven through this five-movement work.

There was a profound delicacy to Shibe’s extraordinary technique as he showcased the gossamer-light timbres of the instrument including gorgeous crystalline harmonics and the bluesy slide of steel across the strings in the final section.

Director John Butt deftly steered the Dunedin Consort’s small string ensemble through this dream-like landscape. Particularly evocative was the passage where Miller reversed the scoring to set the guitar amidst the string players strumming their instruments while the viola played a haunting tune.

The balance between guitar and strings didn’t work quite so well in the other contemporary pieces. There was a heaviness to the strings in George Duthie’s arrangement of James MacMillan’s From Galloway, originally written for solo clarinet, which tended to overwhelm the light fluidity of the guitar lines. Linda Catlin Smith’s dirge-like Sinfonia with its repeated minimalist phrases and a part to every string instrument was also overpowering. Only David Fennessy’s Rosewoods – an expansion of his pieces for solo guitar – maintained the fragile equilibrium between the ensemble and the jewel-like transparency of the guitar.

Although Purcell’s Fantasia 7 and In Nomine were relentlessly gloomy the Consort played them beautifully and captured the jauntier dance-light qualities of Geminiani’s Italian/Scottish mash up, The last Time I came o’er the Moor.

The highlight was undoubtedly Shibe’s breathtaking opener – selections from the Straloch and Rowallan lute manuscripts. You could have heard a pin drop as our ears adjusted to the gorgeous whispered lute melodies that melted into Dowland’s elegant Lachrimae antiquae.​​​​​