Dreams & Fancies: English Music for Solo Guitar

Delphian

What is it about the young Edinburgh-born Sean Shibe that marks him out as one of the foremost guitarists of the young generation? It is quite simply that rare symbiosis of technical mastery and innate musicality. The evidence is there from bar one of this latest album, which is a golden representation of the old and new in English guitar music, from the great Elizabethan John Dowland to 20th century guitar classics written for the doyen of modern guitar playing, Julian Bream, by Walton, Britten, Malcolm Arnold and Lennox Berkeley. Shibe finds effortless poetry in Walton’s

Five Bagatelles, revels in the lyricism of Berkeley’s Sonatina, implants glowing affection among the rugged framework of Arnold’s Fantasy, and presents Britten’s masterful

Nocturnal after John Dowland with luminous subtlety. Shibe also imbues three Dowland pieces with infinite grace, stylistic integrity, and more than a whiff of original thought.