Milton Court, London
With music that ranged across four centuries culminating in the premiere of Cassandra Miller’s Chanter for guitar and strings, this concert showcased the skill of Shibe, a truly compelling performer
The Dunedin Consort’s reputation as one of the UK’s classiest ensembles is based on its historically correct performances of baroque and classical works, with a repertoire that rarely strays beyond the end of the 18th century. But a collaboration with the guitarist Sean Shibe has taken the Dunedin well beyond its comfort zone, with a programme that begins in the Renaissance but reaches right into the 21st century, ending with the first performances of Chanter, a specially commissioned work for guitar and strings by Cassandra Miller.
Like much of Miller’s output, Chanter is based on existing music, in this case a Scottish air as played on the smallpipes by Brìghde Chaimbeul. Miller played Chaimbeul’s performance of the air to Shibe, had him repeatedly sing it back to her and recorded the results. From those recordings she made her own transcriptions, which became the basis of the 25-minute work, though the source material hardly appears in recognisable form in the finished concerto. Tiny phrases and occasional cadences occasionally seem to hint at it, but the work unfolds more like a series of gently rocking meditations, lullabies almost, in which neither the guitar nor the string orchestra ever raises its voice.
