Reviewed by Steven Whitehead

This is difficult to review as I want to start listening all over again rather than writing about it. Anything by Johann Sebastian Bach is worth hearing and always bears repetition but this collection of lute music played most excellently on guitar by the talented Sean Shibe is, for me, as listenable as my previous favourite of Bach's French Suites. The content is "Lute Suite in E Minor" (BWV 996), "Partita in C Minor" (BWV 997), and "Prelude, Fugue and Allegro in E Flat Major" (BWV 998). I remind myself that BWV numbers in the 900s indicate works for miscellaneous instruments as the numbering system is, like the Dewey Decimal we see in libraries, thematic rather than chronological. The instrument that Bach had in mind is questionable and the CD booklet notes by William L. Hoffman are helpful here. The music is scored for keyboard which, for Bach, would be organ or - more likely - harpsichord although it could be that his first players were able to read a keyboard score and play it on a lute at sight. Perhaps. However, it is more likely that Bach was writing for a lute-harpsichord or Lauternwerck (no, me neither). Moving on from what might have happened to what we actually have on this disc leads us to some lovely music played on an acoustic guitar by the Edinburgh-born guitarist Sean Shibe who you may have heard on his award-winning 2018 release 'SoftLOUD' that features the definitive take on Steve Reich's "Electric Counterpoint". To move from that jazz-rock classic to the very different subtleties of Bach is quite a leap but Shibe makes it all sound effortless. There is a good case to be made for some or even all of the three pieces on this Bach disc having been written for use in the quiet parts of a Lutheran Communion service in the same way that some of his cello suites were first used. Certainly, there are some themes that appear in Bach's choral writing that are recycled here if we listen very carefully and if you like background music as an aid to meditation then this collection would work very well. As ever with Bach, the music is tuneful and often playful (he did like a dance did Johann Sebastian) and my only slight criticism is that 46 minutes is not particularly generous. Surely with a composer so gifted and prolific as Bach there could have been something else to get us closer to the hour mark. But other than this petty cavil, this is one of the most enjoyable instrumental albums I have heard since, well, since Sean Shibe's 2018 'SoftLOUD' I mentioned above.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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