REVIEW: Sean Shibe in Brighton

Programme: John Dowland, Forlorn Hope Fancy, Fantasia No 1A (1604); Malcolm Arnold, Fantasy Op 107 (7 movements, 1970); William Walton, 5 Bagatelles (1972); Lennox Berkeley, Sonatina Op 52/1 (3 movements, 1957)); Benjamin Britten, Nocturnal after Dowland Op 70 (9 movements, 1963).

The Coffee Concerts have sexed themselves up! After a diet of violinists, violists, cellists, the odd double bassist, wind or horn players and pianists, they finally peered around a curtain into a Sunday morning world of sensuality only a guitarist can bring in on the bedroom breakfast tray.

Other strings, winds and ivories transport the ear. You may glimpse perspiration shed or spit spent in the performance, bodies swaying, elbows pumping, wrists cocking - but this is incidental excitement. What you hear outweighs what you see.

But a guitarist has extra arrows in his Eros quiver. He has six strings to his bow and, with his eight fingers and a thumb, and bits of his hand doing lots of different things at the same time or in succession, these combine to seduce with a myriad of sounds and probably more different individual effects than we see carried out on a violin or piano.

Aurally, this versatility can extend to resembling a harp or a lute. And the strength of a guitar enables a remarkable dynamic range. Shibe needed a smaller space than the ACCA so everyone could all see this going on up-close. But watch closely, see the dexterity, hear the results, and you begin to realise why guitarists and lutenists playing in intimate situations, modern or ancient, ‘score’ heavily. The double entendre is deliberate!

The sexiest the Coffee Concerts got before this was probably at The Old Market when Acoustic Triangle stretched out on the duvet heartthrob pianist Gwilym Simcock and saxophonist/bass clarinetist Tim Garland. Classical lovers would protest, “But that was jazz!”