This CD is reissued by ArkivMusic.
Notes and Editorial Reviews
Sharon Isbin, as her previous recordings have made clear, is an exceptionally fine guitarist: her warmly sonorous tone quality (including a beautiful range of colour in quiet playing), her brilliantly crisp articulation and her fine sense of sustained line are no less impressive than her sheer virtuosity. The fiendishly difficult repeated notes of the piece by Bruce MacCombie that gives this collection its title are no problem to her, but the way that she keeps the music moving and building through its juxtaposed sections of what might in other hands sound like empty 'minimalist' strumming is still more admirable. She plays John Duarte's charmingly fresh folk-song setting with fine tone and great affection, brings formidable power to
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Joan Tower's machine-like Clocks (another piece that would be distressingly vacant without Isbin's impressive resource) and makes as much as any guitarist can of the first two of Gershwin's preludes.
Alas, the music she seems to have least to say about is by far the greatest here, Britten's masterly Nocturnal. The work cannot often have been played more beautifully, with every note in the difficult second and fourth variations unerringly in place, the long lines unbroken by awkward stretches. The sixth variation (marked ''dreaming'') is serenely lovely, but you have to turn to other performances (perhaps less perfect ones) for a realization that the dream is not an untroubled one. The shadows of the piece, its terrors even, are hardly hinted at, and although Dowland's melody, emerging magically from the preceding ''Passacaglia'', is exquisitely played, there is little sense of its arrival being a moving revelation. The guitar-playing is astonishing throughout; the best music-making here is in Walton's Bagatelles, whose geniality and wit Isbin captures splendidly, without any neglect of their warm lyricism. The recording is immaculate.
-- Michael Oliver, Gramophone [7/1994]
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Works on This Recording
1.
Nightshade Rounds by Bruce MacCombie
Performer:
Sharon Isbin (Guitar)
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1979; USA
Date of Recording: 1993
Venue: Studio M, Minnesota Pub Radio, St Paul
Length: 10 Minutes 6 Secs.
2.
Clocks by Joan Tower
Performer:
Sharon Isbin (Guitar)
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1985; USA
Date of Recording: 1993
Venue: Studio M, Minnesota Pub Radio, St Paul
Length: 9 Minutes 7 Secs.
3.
English Suite for Guitar, Op. 31: no 2, Folk Song by John Duarte
Performer:
Sharon Isbin (Guitar)
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1963-1965; England
Date of Recording: 1993
Venue: Studio M, Minnesota Pub Radio, St Paul
Length: 4 Minutes 20 Secs.
4.
Nocturnal after John Dowland, Op. 70 by Benjamin Britten
Performer:
Sharon Isbin (Guitar)
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1963; England
Date of Recording: 1993
Venue: Studio M, Minnesota Pub Radio, St Paul
Length: 17 Minutes 53 Secs.
5.
Preludes (3) for Piano: no 1 in B flat major, Allegro ben ritmato e deciso by George Gershwin
Performer:
Sharon Isbin (Guitar)
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1926; USA
Date of Recording: 1993
Venue: Studio M, Public Radio, St. Paul, Minn.
Length: 1 Minutes 47 Secs.
Notes: Transcribed: Carlos Barbosa-Lima
6.
Preludes (3) for Piano: no 2 in C sharp minor, Andante con moto e poco rubato by George Gershwin
Performer:
Sharon Isbin (Guitar)
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1926; USA
Date of Recording: 1993
Venue: Studio M, Minnesota Pub Radio, St Paul
Length: 4 Minutes 1 Secs.
Notes: Transcribed: Carlos Barbosa-Lima
7.
Bagatelles (5) for Guitar by Sir William Walton
Performer:
Sharon Isbin (Guitar)
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1972; England
Date of Recording: 1993
Venue: Studio M, Minnesota Pub Radio, St Paul
Length: 13 Minutes 54 Secs.
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