Gramophone Magazine Editors Choice December 2023
“…an extraordinary account, bursting with nuance and personality and easily rivalling Julian Bream’s from 1978. Ginastera’s Sonata itself boils down Argentine folk material and nearly every guitar technique known at the time into something more viscous and muscular – qualities that Shibe seizes on, and communicates, with a pervasive sense of astonishment, as though he’s discovering the piece for the first time yet has known it for ever. Now that’s guitar-playing.”
Gramophone Magazine, December 2023
Sean Shibe returns to the classical guitar on Profesión, bringing together works by Agustín Barrios, Heitor Villa-Lobos and Alberto Ginastera. The album derives its name from Barrios’s “Profesión de Fe” (profession of faith), a poem which he often used as a preface to his concerts. The poem references indigenous mythological deities, and praises the power of the guitar as the ultimate conduit to the secrets of the divine South-American destiny. Barrios’s La Catedral and Julia Florida are combined with Villa Lobos’s 12 Études, while Ginastera’s Sonata completes the programme. These works by South American composers begin with homage and pastiche in reverence of the Old World, but build towards a totally original idiom – musical magical realism. The repertoire is voluminous, indulging in excess, and narcotic, and as such creates a counterweight to the reserved and introspective nature of Shibe’s acclaimed classical predecessor album Camino. This will be Shibe’s first-ever album focussing on repertoire that was originally written for the classical guitar, and he plays a Hauser copy built for Julian Bream. It was considered one of the best instruments of the 1930s, and fits the sound world of this programme like a glove.
Order CD (official EU store): https://www.pentatonemusic.com/product/profesion/
Order CD (Presto Classical, UK): https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/9538319–profesion
Stream: https://lnk.to/ShibeProfesion
Sean Shibe 