Monday, May 16, 2011, Music Review
 
Classical Guitarist Making Herself Heard
By Allan Kozinn
 
The classical guitar is mostly a solitary instrument, partly because the greatest works written for it are in the solo repertory. So even though its concerto repertory has grown prodigiously since the late 1930s and is plentifully available on recordings, opportunities to hear guitarists play concertos in concert remain comparatively rare.
 

Brian Harkin for The New York Times Sharon Isbin performed with the Salomé Chamber Orchestra at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The technical problem should no longer be so daunting now that guitarists routinely use subtle amplification, as Sharon Isbin did in her performance with the Salomé Chamber Orchestra on Saturday evening at the Metropolitan Museum. Ms. Isbin uses a system that lets her be heard but preserves the poetry and warmth of the guitar’s timbre: her sound was rounded and buttery throughout the instrument’s range.
 
The evening was very much hers. Though the orchestra, which performs standing and without a conductor, gave a glowing account of Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro (Op. 47), it mostly collaborated with Ms. Isbin on concertos and a chamber piece.
 
The program opened with Vivaldi’s Concerto in D (RV 93), originally for the lute. Ms. Isbin took a relaxed, easygoing approach, even in the bright outer movements. But if her focus was on precision and directness, she sacrificed nothing in energy. As in her Virgin and Warner recordings of the work, she was generous with ornamentation in the repeated sections. In the Adagio especially, she expanded freely on Vivaldi’s slow-moving, introspective melody and adorned phrase endings with cross-string trills, which, unlike the easier and more common single variety, have the clarity and definition of a keyboard trill.
 
Ms. Isbin took a similarly mellow approach to Rodrigo’s “Fantasía Para un Gentilhombre”, a 1954 meditation on dances by the 17th-century Spanish composer Gaspar Sanz. Usually this fantasia is played as a straightforward dialogue between guitar and orchestra, each presenting Rodrigo’s elaborations on the Sanz pieces with equal zest. Ms. Isbin, instead, created the illusion of historical distance, as if the guitar line represented Sanz’s voice, with the orchestra providing Rodrigo’s commentary. (That said, she was at her most arresting in the very un-Sanzian harplike cadenza in the finale.)
 
Between the Vivaldi and Rodrigo works, Ms. Isbin and a quartet from the orchestra (a quintet if you count the castanet and tambourine player, who joined in for the Fandango finale) gave a brisk account of Boccherini’s Quintet No. 4 (G. 448). Ms. Isbin also played two solo works: a lovely account of Tárrega’s “Capricho Arabe” in which her rhythmically free reading of the introductory filigree suggested the sound of an oud, and Andrew York’s pleasant “Andecy”.



October 22, 2009
 
Classical guitarist Sharon Isbin shines in performance with Nashville Symphony
By Russell Johnston
 
Guitar with orchestra has historically been an unusual pairing, but six-string virtuoso Sharon Isbin is changing that. She’s on the short list of today’s top classical guitarists, and her performance last Friday with the Nashville Symphony for “Classical Guitar, German Genius”, was an ear-opening demonstration of the instrument’s possibilities.
 
The orchestra was in fine form under the baton of guest conductor John Fiore, whose reading of the overture and “Venusberg Music” from Wagner’s Tannhäuser translated into a compelling performance. Their transparent sound clarified how Wagner’s distinctive and often unexpected harmonies emerge from intertwining melodic strands.
 
Isbin has done much to increase her instrument’s repertoire; Christopher Rouse’s Concert de Gaudí was the ninth guitar concerto she has commissioned or premiered (her recording of this engaging work earned a Grammy award in 2002).
 
Flamenco-flavored strumming and castanets quickly place the piece in a Spanish sound-world, but this is no pastiche—Rouse works the “ethnic” materials into a somewhat surreal, dreamlike fabric. Though it nominally follows a classic three-movement template, the concerto has a fluidity of form echoing the hallucinatory quality of Antoni Gaudí’s architecture, which inspired the work.
 
Rouse’s guitar writing is highly idiomatic, giving Isbin a great platform to showcase the instrument’s many colors and techniques. She ranged from a huge, rich tone in the melodic middle movement to a penetrating, tightly focused sound in more rapid-fire sections, and her tremolo was staggeringly smooth.
 
The orchestral palette was just as colorful as the soloist’s, with its lush string backdrops, dissonant but halo-like chords in the winds, subtle and effective percussion. Rouse suggests a breath of wind by combining a shimmering cymbal with some hissing into the trombones, which sounds a lot more gimmicky in prose than it did in performance.
 
Isbin, who returned to the stage after the concerto for a pleasant rendition of guitarist/composer Andrew York’s folk-flavored Andecy, has a simple solution to the balance problems that have typically plagued guitarists on the orchestral platform—amplification. Now, don’t get squeamish: She didn’t plug into a Fender Twin Reverb. Low-lying speakers directly behind her onstage blended naturally with the acoustic instrument, creating no aural confusion about the soloist’s location. This way, she did not have to sacrifice subtlety to be heard, and the orchestra was not hamstrung by trying to stay out of her way.
 
Fiore’s tasteful pacing effectively conveyed both the breezy lyricism and the Beethovenian developmental propulsion of Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 3. Intermission wasn’t sufficient to clear away Rouse’s varied orchestration; perhaps that’s why Schumann’s instrumental textures felt a bit heavy. Though the program order was conventional, opening the concert with this piece may have helped listeners hear it more sympathetically. That question aside, the performance was certainly well-executed, and particularly enjoyable was the organ-like feel of the contrapuntal fourth movement, where Schumann puts his somewhat blocky orchestration to evocative use.
 
With a varied and interesting repertoire, top-notch soloists and an orchestra more polished than ever, the Nashville Symphony is off to a great start this season. If you haven’t made it down to the Schermerhorn Center yet this fall, stop procrastinating and get yourself a ticket.



Publicado el martes 21 de julio del 2009, MIAMI
 
Sharon Isbin, la intimidad de la guitarra
By Daniel Fernandez
 
Desde muy temprana edad Sharon Isbin comenzó a cosechar premios y distinciones con su instrumento, la guitarra. Heredera de la tradición de sus más insignes maestros: Segovia, Díaz, Minella, Turek, se mantiene como una de las guitarristas más buscadas y gustadas, como quedó demostrado en el recital que ofreciera el jueves 16, en la Cogregational Church de Coral Gables, como parte de la Summer Series de ese templo.
 
Comenzó la noche con una estilizada Batucada, de Isaias Savio, seguida de un difícil y sabroso Estudio, de Villa-Lobos en edición de Barbosa-Lima; pero fue en la siguiente obra, donde pudo apreciarse con mayor profundidad el nivel interpretativo y la irreprochable técnica de Isbin, El decamerón negro, de Brouwer, obra en tres partes compuesta para ella.
 
Brouwer ha logrado un exitoso sincretismo de lo afrocubano con las armonías atonales y la guitarrista parece muy identificada con el sabor latinoamericano; aunque su repertorio es vasto en tiempo y espacio. En esta obra difícil y sensual, se mostró siempre en absoluto control.
 
Las tres últimas piezas de la primera parte de la noche fueron clásicos de la guitarra, epítomes de la escuela y el alma españolas: Danza española no. 5, de Granados; Recuerdos de Alhambra, de Tárrega, y Asturias, de Albéniz. Aquí la intérprete no sólo se dio un gusto bien visible, sino que hizo gala de su técnica, especialmente en la filigrana “acuática” que abre la de Tárrega. Isbin gusta de tomar las obras hacia el extremo más lento, enriqueciendo en intensidad los pasajes y elaborando sus frases de manera que se establezca su personalidad sin quebrar la tradición.
 
Pero si bien en los clásicos de la guitarra Isbin se lució, no menos brillante quedó en la segunda parte del programa con un repertorio más cercano. Primero Joan Baez Suite, op. 144, de John Duarte, también compuesta para ella, por encargo de la Augustine Foundation. En siete partes, esta obra recrea para la guitarra algunas de las canciones que llevaran a Baez a la fama mundial en la década de 1960. Especialmente evocadora y bella es la parte VI) Where Have All the Flowers Gone? que se siente como muy cercana a la intérprete.
 
La siguiente oferta resultó posiblemente el momento más hermoso y mágico de la noche, el Capricho árabe, de Tárrega, que Isbin entregó con especial sensualidad y magia. Luego el Zapateado, de Regino Sainz de la Maza, puso un poco de velocidad en los hábiles dedos de Isbin, para cerrar finalmente con dos valses, uno venezolano y otro peruano, el Vals no. 3, de Antonio Lauro, y el Vals op.8, #4, de Agustín Barrios Mangoré. Durante toda la noche, la guitarrista presentaba sus piezas y hacia comentarios más o menos informativos o chistosos, antes de los valses, comentó que el día anterior había partido desde Venecia para llegar a Miami después de un vuelo de 21 horas. Quizá para hacer saber al público cautivo que se encontraba cansada y que no podía esperar muchos encores. También habló de su reciente disco Journey to the New World con Baez y el formidable violinista y compositor Mark O’Connor.
 
Y así fue, a pesar de la ovación de pie, al concluir sus exquisitas entregas de los valses, Isbin sólo regaló un hermoso número, su propio arreglo de la obra de Naomi Shemer Jerusalem de oro. Fue una noche muy especial con una de las leyendas vivas de la guitarra.
 
© 2009 El Nuevo Herald. All Rights Reserved.



July 18, 2009
 
A masterful Isbin reigns over the classical guitar
By David Fleshler
 
The guitar occupies a difficult place in the classical-music world. Long a preeminent pop-music instrument, it has a relatively small classical repertoire and the opportunity for only one or two real stars to emerge every generation. Sharon Isbin, who performed Thursday in Coral Gables, is the instrument’s reigning star. Her classical credentials are impeccable: Grammy winner; first guitarist to make a recording with the New York Philharmonic, founder and chair of Juilliard’s guitar department. Beyond the concert hall, she appears frequently on NPR’s All Things Considered and A Prairie Home Companion, and she performed for the soundtrack of Martin Scorcese’s The Departed.
 
Her drawing power was clear in her performance at Coral Gables Congregational Church for the Community Arts Program summer series, as organizers set up extra chairs to handle the crowd.
 
Isbin’s manner is dramatic. As she plays, she closes her eyes and leans into the guitar or holds her head up as if staring into the distance. But there wasn’t a hint of showing off in her playing, despite her clear mastery of the instrument. Difficult rapid notes and complex accompanying passages came off without strain, as Isbin appeared to put all her energy into drawing out the music. Her palette of tone colors was vast—rounded, bell-like tones for melodies in the upper strings for the Granados Spanish Dance No. 5;delicate tremolos for Tarrega’s famous, mandolin-like Recuerdos de la Alhambra; sharp needle thrusts and grand sweeps of the right hand for Albeniz’s even more famous Asturias. Isbin has a commendable history of commissioning new works for guitar by composers including John Corigliano, Lukas Foss and Joseph Schwantner. Her Coral Gables performance including two works written for her.
 
The first was the engagingly atmospheric Black Decameron by the Cuban composer Leo Brouwer, a meditative, harmonically rich work inspired by African love songs. The second commissioned was John Duarte’s 2002 Joan Baez Suite, a seven-movement piece that takes such songs as The House of the Rising Sun and Where Have all the Flowers Gone and elaborates on them with unusual harmonies and bits of classical repertoire, such as Purcell’s aria When I am Laid in Earth and Schubert’s song Trockne Blumen. If any instrument can make connections between the classical and popular worlds, it’s the guitar.
 
Isbin’s superb musicianship and effortless technique came off best in the more idiomatic works of Albeniz, Tarrega and a few others who took best advantage of the guitar’s melodic and harmonic capabilities.



September 18, 2008
 
Guitarist Sharon Isbin creates rare, totally hushed moment
By David Hawley, Special to the Pioneer Press
 
The Minnesota Orchestra launched its 106th season Thursday with the traditional playing of the “Star Spangled Banner” and also marked the state’s sesquicentennial with a stirring new orchestration of “Hail! Minnesota” that ought to be added to the orchestra’s annual season-opening flourishes.
 
“Hail! Minnesota”, in case you’ve forgotten, is the official state song, written in 1904 by Truman E. Rickard and reportedly inspired by the composer’s camping trip to some northern wilderness. Steve Heitzeg’s new arrangement manages to provide both a triumphant fanfare and a tender ode while still offering stanzas that can be sung by an audience.
 
From there, attention turned to works written in or inspired by Spanish-speaking countries, featuring another welcome appearance by Minnesota-born guitarist Sharon Isbin.
 
The titled theme of the opening program is “Viva Espana”, and I suspect it was constructed around the appearance of Isbin performing her acclaimed interpretation of Joaquin Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez”. Probably the most popular piece ever written for guitar and full orchestra, it’s part of Isbin’s core repertoire, and it’s been said her interpretation is the one Rodrigo preferred.
 
But don’t worry about Isbin telephoning it in. Her first performance Thursday—particularly when she played the achingly tender second movement—created one of those rare, totally hushed moments that don’t occur often enough in the concert hall. Isbin is themaster of this piece and seemingly discovers it anew each time she plays it.
 
The other highlight of the program was Alberto Ginastera’s “Variaciones concertantes”, a set of two interludes and seven variations that has a notable connection to this orchestra. The American premiere of the work was given here in 1953 and Conductor Antal Dorati recorded it with the orchestra the following year.
 
It’s a great showpiece, offering solo work for various single or paired instruments before ending in a highvoltage gaucho dance. Fittingly for the start of a season, it provided a showcase for the depth of this band’s musicianship—including solo turns for such seldom-spotlighted instruments as double bass and viola.
 
The program also included an up-tempo version of Chabrier’s familiar “Espana”, which opened the concert nicely but seemed like a bon-bon; and the second suite from Manuel de Falla’s ballet, “The Three-Cornered Hat”. The concert closer was Copland’s “El Salon Mexico”, which brought a Gershwinesque jazziness to Hispanic tunes and finished with a slam-bang.
 
What: Minnesota Orchestra performs music inspired by Spanish-speaking countries. Soloist: Guitarist Sharon Isbin.
 
Where: College of Saint Benedict, St. Joseph.



March 6, 2008
 
Guitarist Isbin a knockout with CSO
By Kyle MacMillan
 
It’s amazing that 13 years have passed since the Colorado Symphony’s last performance of Joaquin Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez”, given the guitar showpiece’s innate popular appeal.
 
That this work is not a fixture on symphonic programs, as it deserves to be, says a great deal about the guitar’s historically secondary status as a solo instrument.
 
But its standing is clearly on the rise, as evidenced Friday evening at Boettcher Concert Hall by the unusually fervid—and richly deserved—ovations for guitarist Sharon Isbin, who made her long-overdue debut with the symphony.
 
In what proves to be a knock-out combination, she merges extraordinary technical facility with a clean, lithe style, and, perhaps most important, the evocative power of a keen storyteller.
 
For her Denver appearance, Isbin performed two of the most beloved orchestral works for solo guitar, starting with Antonio Vivaldi’s Guitar Concerto in D major, RV 93, with a suitably intimate ensemble of 19 musicians.
 
As wonderfully sprightly as the opening is, the slow second movement is the focal point, and Isbin performed this enchanting section with leisurely delicacy, conjuring the seeming timelessness of a lazy spring afternoon.
 
The “Concierto de Aranjuez” (1937) is meant to be a virtuosic guitar showcase, and Isbin made sure it was, not with needless flash and flourishes but with artful and expressive musicianship. If the first movement of this high-spirited, folk-flavored work was less emphatic than some versions—more smoldering embers than flames—it was no less expressive.
 
As in the Vivaldi, the highlight is the slow second movement, and here her abilities as musical storyteller were most evident as she offered a soulful, penetrating take on Rodrigo’s powerful music.
 
As an encore, Isbin presented Francisco Tárrega’s “Recuerdos de la Alhambra”, with her fluttering fingers casting an enchanting spell.
 
Ending the evening were two masterworks by Claude Debussy, including “La Mer”, which pose enormous interpretative challenges. Conductor Scott O’Neil conveyed the basic sense of these pieces but little of the ethereal transcendency they can attain.



Friday, March 9, 2007
 
Something special
Classical guitar master Sharon Isbin shines at Scott
By Matthew Erikson, Star-Telegram Staff Writer
 
FORT WORTH—How do we love guitarist Sharon Isbin? Let us count the ways.
 
Thursday evening at Scott Theatre, Isbin was the featured performer for the Fort Worth Classic Guitar Society’s recital series, one that regularly brings in distinguished performers.
 
Yet there’s something special about Isbin. As a woman in a male-dominated field, Isbin has been a trailblazer in more ways than most classical musicians could ever dream.
 
Her teachers include the legendary Andres Segovia and piano doyenne Rosalyn Tureck. She’s the first guitarist to record with the New York Philharmonic. What’s more, Isbin has had no difficulty straddling the worlds of classical music and pop culture; her playing is on the soundtrack of the film The Departed. She won a Grammy in 2001 and has commissioned a whopping number of works for guitar.
 
Three of those commissions—works by Leo Brouwer, John Duarte and Tan Dun—were heard in Thursday’s mostly Latin and folk-flavored program. Isbin’s artistry made every one of the assorted pieces shine.
 
Impeccable voicing and a bell-like clarity added excitement to the samba rhythms of Isaias Savio’s Batucada, the evening’s curtain-raiser. Evocative narrative-inspired pieces by Gaudencio Thiago de Mello and Brouwer (his Black Decameron) displayed a gorgeous dynamic range and a gift for interpretative color.
 
Isbin demonstrated a singer’s cantabile and supple phrasing throughout a lovely set of pieces by Spanish composers Granados, Tarrega and Albeniz.
 
Duarte’s Joan Baez Suite and Tan’s Seven Desires for Guitar were testaments to Isbin’s versatility. They were also the most intriguing works of the evening. Baez’s folk-like strains were given polyphonic, richly hued treatment in Duarte’s touching work. Tan’s exotic music was brilliantly rendered with its percussive embellishments and strumming sounds simulating a Chinese lute.



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.



February 13, 2001 - Page D03 - Music Review
 
Sharon Isbin plays beyond virtuosity
By Michael Manning, Globe Correspondent
 
Sometime after the ’60s, the guitar replaced the piano as the most widely abused instrument. But the upside of that spike in interest was a small group of American guitarists, now enjoying the full maturity of middle age, who’ve inspired a significant new guitar repertoire while bringing the instrument, with its old repertoire intact, into the 21st century. Principal among these artists is Sharon Isbin, whose FleetBoston Celebrity Series recital took place Saturday night in Jordan Hall.
 
Isbin’s artistry thwarts the kind of analytical listening that usually informs notices like this. This listener found such analysis trivial in the face of the overwhelming humanity and emotionality of Isbin’s playing. To be clear, I’m not talking about turgid, hyperbolic sentiment, nor am I suggesting in any way a paucity of intelligence or the supplanting of coherence with impulse. Neither is it implied that Isbin is anything less than a traditional virtuosa. It’s just that her playing connects in ways that are deeply instinctual and natural, drawing one into the moment like the best storytelling does. One garners feelings from her playing—not abstractions of emotion, but nameable feelings such as melancholy, nostalgia, and happiness.
 
If there’s a warhorse in the guitar’s repertoire, it’s Francisco Tarrega’s trembling portrait of a medieval Spanish citadel, “Recuerdos de la Alhambra.” Isbin’s performance was full of the remembrance that the title explicitly names. Enrique Granados’s Spanish Dance No. 5 is another well-worn concert morsel. Originally written for piano, its braying grace notes and need for licentious rubato and quick shifts of color make it guitar piece nearly perfect for virtuosi like Isbin.
 
Of late, Isbin has been collaborating with the Brazilian percussionist Gaudencio Thiago de Mello, with whom she shared half of this program. On a range of instruments, from rainsticks to turtle shells to ceramic jugs to what appeared simply to be a wooden box, de Mello produced extraordinary sounds. He’s one of those percussionists who constantly plays melody; he shapes rhythms with the sensibilities of a poet, coloring like an instrumentalist, phrasing like a singer.
 
It’s sufficient to say of his compositions that they are beautiful. But they’re also gentle, hypnotic, bewitching, and beguiling—stylistically crossing Antonio Carlos Jobim with Paul Winter. Just to hear the elaborate, polytonal song of the rare Amazonian bird uirapuru, woven by tape into one of his pieces, would have redeemed the entire evening. But the evening comprised so much more than individual moments, achieving what few events of any kind do—meaning.
 
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company



June 5, 2000
 
Sharon Isbin at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall
A journey of a thousand colors begins with the artistry of Sharon Isbin
By John von Rhein Chicago Tribune Music Critic
 
If the critic James Gibbons Huneker were still around to write his inimitable critical prose, he would call Sharon Isbin a pianississimist. She gets nuances out of the classical guitar few guitarists since Segovia have matched. Everything she performs bespeaks perfect technical control yet suggests spontaneous improvisation-the art that conceals art.
 
Her instrument speaks with a thousand colors and those colors were marvelously arrayed at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall on Saturday night, when the American guitar virtuoso presented a recital to close the season’s Segovia Classical Guitar series, sponsored by the Northwestern University School of Music and the Chicago Classical Guitar Society.
 
The guitar is an intimate instrument, one much better suited to a private salon than a large concert hall. Through her formidable artistry and with the help of her custom-built wireless sound reinforcement system, Isbin succeeded in striking a happy medium. Even when her playing sank to a confidential whisper, her tone had body and impact, and she was free to commune with the audience through her music.
 
No guitarist is more eager to embrace the many worlds that the classical guitar can bridge. Isbin’s program, including selections from two of her Teldec albums, ‘Dreams of a World’ and ‘Journey to the Amazon,’ offered an engaging tour of classical and folk music.
 
The guitarist ventured from the Brazilian rainforest to Venezuela, Cuba, Spain, Israel and the Appalachian Mountains. Her artistry is such that she spoke every musical dialect like a native.
 
Raptly engaged in her playing as much as in her spoken introductions to each piece, the audience clearly enjoyed the ride. The subtleties of her soft dynamics required a degree of close concentration from her listeners, which I’m happy to report they gave her.
 
Her obviously deep love of the instrument and its traditions is matched by her flawless intonation, clarity of articulation and ability to spin a warm singing line as subtly and sensitively as any classical recital singer.
 
Rhythmic urgency and a command of a vast color palette seem second nature to her. In Tarrega’s ‘Recuerdos de la Alhambra’ (Memories of the Alhambra) she kept the melody distinct over an accompaniment suggesting multiple strummed guitars.
 
Her playing was positively hypnotic in Granados’ ‘Leyenda’ (WFMT’s familiar signature music), whose ostinato figure she traced in a crescendo of gathering intensity.
 
The South American portion of her world tour was particularly noteworthy because of the unfamiliar composers and pieces it turned up. Isbin sang tenderly (Antonio Lauro’s ‘Waltz No. 3, Natalia’) before launching into an infectiously spirited Brazilian samba by Isaias Savio (‘Batucada’) such as one might encounter during carnival time.
 
I would like to have heard the ‘rainforest’ percussion obbligato to Guadencio Thiago de Mello’s ‘Uirapuru do Amazonas’ but was delighted to discover the piece so beautifully played in solo form.
 
Isbin has worked with numerous composers to bring new music into the world, and three such works—music written for her or arranged by her—were included in her program.
 
Leo Brouwer’s absorbing ‘The Black Decameron’ (1981) seasons Afro-Cuban melodies and rhythms with some mild harmonic spice. Isbin’s arrangements of four songs by the Israeli composer Naomi Shemer—her country’s troubadour poet—pay heartfelt tribute to the soil and soul of a people.
 
Best of all was British composer John Duarte’s five-part suite ‘Appalachian Dreams’ (1996), settings of nine folk songs that cover an extraordinary range of timbres, textures and moods, including a down-and-dirty bluegrass-guitar treatment of ‘Darling Cora.’ All three works were splendidly played, as was Granados’ Spanish Dance No. 5, played as an encore.