Thursday, March 8, 2007 Isbin fills Caruth with refined guitar playing  By Scott Cantrell / Classical Music Critic  Darnell Renee / Special Contributor  Sharon Isbin brought an amazing range of color and texture to her performance at Southern Methodist University’s Caruth Auditorium. If there were any doubts of the guitar’s potential for elegance, they were laid to rest Tuesday evening by Sharon Isbin. Classical guitar’s reigning diva came to Southern Methodist University’s Caruth Auditorium and, in an enterprising program ranging from the 19th to the 21st century, put on quite a show of sophisticated musicianship.   Ms. Isbin used every decibel to telling effect, while cultivating an amazing range of color and texture. And she could have taught many a pianist and conductor a lot about rhythm and its subtleties.   There was a fair bit of typical feel-good Spanish and Latin-American music. Ms. Isbin brought the loveliest improvisational feeling to Enrique Granados’ Spanish Dance No. 5 and generously expressive pliancy to Francisco Tárrega’s Recuerdos de la Alhambra. It’s hard to imagine more enchanting performances of dances by the Spaniard Regino Sainz de la Maza, the Brazilian Isaias Savio and the Paraguayan Agustin Barrios Mangoré.   But Ms. Isbin has also been a muse for numerous living composers, and the program included three significant works penned for her.   From the Chinese-born American composer Tan Dun came Seven Desires for Guitar, arranged by Dr. Tan in 2000 from his earlier guitar concerto for Ms. Isbin. This deftly mixed echoes of foot-stamping, guitar-slapping flamenco with the twangy, pitch-tweaking idioms of traditional Chinese music for the stringed instrument called the pipa.   A Joan Baez Suite by English composer John Duarte was an imaginative seven-movement sendup of songs associated with the American folk singer. From a bit of neoclassical counterpoint for “Once I Had a Sweetheart” to stark open fifths accompanying “The Unquiet Grave” to gently surprising harmonies for “House of the Rising Sun,” this certainly refreshed familiar material.   African love stories were the inspiration for The Black Decameron, a 1981 triptych by Cuban guitarist-composer Leo Brouwer. Ms. Isbin worked particular magic here with colors, in “The Maiden in Love” layering no fewer than three different tone qualities, from pingy to quietly creamy.   The printed program devoted a page apiece to Ms. Isbin and the Allegro Guitar Society of Dallas, which presented the recital, but not an inch to notes on the music. But, in a pleasantly unassuming way, Ms. Isbin supplied useful spoken introductions.

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Updated 3/27/2007 by Stephen Linhart Copyright Isbin, Linhart Button Photo: O’Shields

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