Profesión (Bonus Track Version)

“The guitar became the destiny of South America,” Sean Shibe tells Apple Music Classical. Profesión brilliantly illustrates this with music by three leading South American composers. First, we hear Brazilian Heitor Villa-Lobos’ luscious Prelude in A Minor, subtitled “Homage to Bach.” Next, music by Paraguayan guitarist composer Agustín Barrios: the beautiful 1921 suite La catedral, once celebrated by the legendary 20th-century Spanish guitarist Andrés Segovia. Shibe was keen to complement the melodic charm of those opening works with pieces “that are also sheerly virtuosic,” and includes in his program Villa-Lobos’ 12 Studies, a groundbreaking cycle from 1928 that delights in and stretches the technique of even the very best guitarists. Villa-Lobos’ 12 Studies take us on a journey, beginning with beguiling homages to Bach, Chopin, and even Rachmaninoff. “By the time we get to the last three or so studies,” says Shibe, “you can hear distant drumming patterns—evocations of the rainforest. There’s a storm happening in the background in the 10th study, a kind of ominous rumbling.” This sets the stage for a work that adds real spice to Profesión: Argentinean Alberto Ginastera’s modernist Sonata for Guitar, composed in 1976. It’s a piece that expanded the instrument’s range of sound, using a variety of “extended techniques.” “The most audible effect is called tambora,” explains Shibe, “where you slap the strings against the body of the guitar to create a snare drum effect. And there are a lot of harmonics in the piece, too, as well as plucking behind the nut [between the fingerboard and the tuning pegs] and scraping of strings. And there are a couple of techniques that he almost makes up.” For all those effects, Ginastera’s Sonata—as much as the works of Barrios and Villa-Lobos—is rooted in South America’s guitar tradition, which informs all of Ginastera’s music, adds Shibe. You can hear the characteristic resonance of a guitar’s open strings, like the peal of church bells, in many of Ginastera’s earlier compositions such as the Harp Concerto. “Finally, quite late in his life,” says Shibe, “this bell tolls again for the last time with the opening of this Sonata. It’s like he’s come home.”