Wood and Wire

One of the great unexpected pleasures of this lockdown period has been listening to the weekly piano performances of Víkingur Ólafsson on the extended Friday edition of BBC Radio 4's Front Row arts magazine programme, streamed live from an empty Harpa Concert Hall in Reykjavik, Iceland (last one coming up this Friday). Despite (or perhaps because of) my declared disbelief in the very possibility of playing the piano, I actually enjoy "classical" piano music a great deal. It's a pleasure I only return to intermittently, however, not least because when my tinnitus is at its worst a concert piano can sound like it has been "prepared" with nuts and bolts. There's also the matter of my complete musical ignorance: in the famous words of Sir Thomas Beecham, "the British may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes". Substitute "understand" for "like", and that pretty much describes me. A measure of my ignorance is that I had never before heard of Ólafsson. He is quite a discovery, though: the range of his repertoire, from Bach to Philip Glass, and his sensitivity to the expressive possibilities inherent in some very different musical traditions are unusual, to say the least. I had no sooner heard his renderings of  Debussy and Rameau – who'd have thought of putting those two together? – than I had ordered a copy of the Debussy-Rameau CD. If you've got access to Spotify you needn't actually buy anything to sample his output, as he's a Deutsche Grammophon artist, and most of their releases are now available there, not to mention a fair few hilariously cheesy promotional videos on YouTube. DG really need to to take some lessons from ECM, when it comes to matters of brand image.

This Friday Ólafsson was asked what music he had been listening to himself during lockdown, and he enthused about a recent Bach recording by another young musician I have to confess I had not heard of before, the half Scottish, half Japanese guitarist Sean Shibe. Naturally I headed to Spotify, looked him up, and gave his output a listen. All I can say is: blimey... Shibe is good. Very good indeed. If you enjoy virtuoso guitar, and have also never heard of this artist, I suggest you might like to check him out, too [1] . I started with the new album of Bach lute music as recommended by Ólafsson. I found the last three tracks in particular – the Prelude, Fugue and Allegro in E-Flat Major, BWV 998 – outstandingly beautiful, and somehow very contemporary. Shibe's touch and control of "colour" are remarkable: even the bass lines are carefully weighted and modulated.

Like Ólafsson, his repertoire is broad and surprising, from Bach right up to some jagged contemporary electric guitar compositions. When I sampled the other albums available, I immediately liked his quiet, understated renderings of some old Scottish melodies on softLOUD, very reminiscent of a John Renbourn album I used to love as a teen, The Lady and the Unicorn, although I suspect the longer-term "grower" from that album will be the three Steve Reich tracks (Electric Counterpoint I-III) played on looped and overdubbed electric guitar.

But I found the most interesting album to be Dreams and Fancies : English Music for Solo Guitar, which jumps the centuries from Dowland to Benjamin Britten. To be honest, I had no idea composers like Britten, Walton, or Arnold had written for the guitar. Again, Shibe's subtle touch brings a real depth of expression, especially to the lute transcriptions, which other guitarists tend to play with a harsh plinky-plonk timbre more resembling a banjo than a modern acoustic guitar. I expect purists dislike this approach, however, in the same way they dislike expressive piano versions of music originally written for the harpsichord, the sound of which was described by Beecham, in another of his much-quoted phrases, as "two skeletons copulating on a tin roof". But if you've ever listened to an "authentic" performance of, say, Bach's Goldberg Variations – having become habituated over decades to the Glenn Gould version – you'll be inclined to agree with Sir Tom, I think. Authenticity has its place, but it's rather like deliberately cooking without potatoes, rice, peppers, tomatoes, or any non-native flavourings: an interesting but not necessarily pleasurable insight into a world we have gratefully left behind. I'll pass on the greasy gruel and have the wholly inauthentic Bombay Aloo, please.

1. If you don't have access to Spotify, there's a full, recent, streamed concert on YouTube by Sean Shibe from an empty Wigmore Hall here. See what you think. There's a very long (8 minute) introductory pause before the concert starts, so you'll need either to be very patient or to jump ahead 8 minutes. The sound quality is not perfect, but what do you expect for nothing?