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By JOHN FLEMING, Times Performing Arts CriticRodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez is the most famous, and most played, work for the instrument, but Sharon Isbin hasn't tired of playing it.
If guitarist Sharon Isbin is the soloist with a symphony orchestra, then there's a good chance Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez is on the program. The concerto is the most famous guitar work, and Isbin will play it next weekend with the Florida Orchestra. She will make her third recording of it in June, with the New York Philharmonic.
Even though the Rodrigo is the work she performs most frequently with orchestras, the guitarist doesn't get tired of it.
"It has so much depth to it emotionally that you can always find something new," said Isbin, a friend of the late Spanish composer, who sought her out after hearing her first recording of the concerto more than 20 years ago. "The wonderful agility of the outer dance movements contrasting with the lyricism of the inner movement really give you a good workout and a lot to express."
Isbin has a special reason for loving the Rodrigo work. It brings back thoughts of her brother, Neil Isbin, who died of AIDS in 1996. Neil, a gay rights activist in New Mexico, requested that Sharon's recording of the middle movement be played at his memorial service.
"What was remarkable was that I had been booked two days after he died to play just that movement with the Baltimore Symphony in a concert in Washington," Isbin said. "To this day, it remains the only time I've ever been asked to play just one movement with an orchestra."
She remembers holding her emotions in check to be able to play the concert. "I didn't even dare tell the conductor about his death. I knew if I did and he gave me just one sad look, I'd fall apart," she said. "I thought it was safer not to say anything. It was just so hard for me to gather all my forces to do this."
The performance communicated Isbin's feelings. "So many people came up to me afterward with tears streaming down their face saying how moved they were," she said.
Eight years later, the Aranjuez remains an emotional work for her: "It certainly isn't raw like it was two days later. But it is still a very powerful and cathartic, heart-wrenching kind of experience. Yet it's a work that also has a lot of joy to it if you look at the outer movements. I think it's important always to celebrate someone's life who has passed on and not only to mourn it."
An irony of the concerto's popularity is that it was not written for legendary Spanish guitarist Andres Segovia, who inspired many of the great 20th century works for the instrument, especially by Spanish composers. Instead, it was commissioned by Regino Sainz de la Maza, who gave the premiere in 1940. None of Rodrigo's other works for guitar and orchestra match it.
"The Fantasia para un Gentilhombre was what Rodrigo wrote for Segovia, who wanted his own piece after hearing how good this one was," said Isbin, who studied under Segovia. "He never played Aranjuez. I think he was annoyed that it wasn't dedicated to him."
Isbin encourages orchestras to program other guitar concertos. Lately, she has had success with two concertos she commissioned from American composers, John Corigliano's Troubadours and Christopher Rouse's Concerto de Gaudi.
"Often I'll pair Aranjuez and Rouse or Aranjuez and Corigliano," she said. "It allows me to introduce something new and yet satisfy the craving for familiarity that is also part of the concert world."
In concert, Isbin uses a portable amplification system that she developed 10 years ago. A wireless microphone inside her guitar feeds a box of omnidirectional speakers.
"The idea is to allow the full range of the instrument to be heard with all the nuances and to make it as if you're in the living room, to carry above the orchestra but in such a subtle way that no one is aware it's amplified," she said.
Isbin grew up in suburban Minneapolis, went to Yale and now lives in New York. She is the only woman guitarist whose prominence rivals the likes of Segovia, Julian Bream, John Williams, Christopher Parkening and Pepe Romero. All the other major guitarists of her generation who came of age in the '70s are men, including Eliot Fisk, Manuel Barrueco and David Russell.
Fifteen years ago, Isbin established the guitar department at the Juilliard School, and a few of her best students have been women. Still, the vast majority of guitar students at the school have been men. She has a few theories as to why the guitar has not been a woman's instrument.
"The first is that the traditional role models have all been men," Isbin said. "Then the classical guitar evolved from flamenco, and flamenco traditionally was a male domain for guitar, and still is, with its own kind of macho flavor. No. 3, in this country, most of the kids who came to study classical guitar back in the '60s and '70s were teenage boys who played rock guitar - how many girls were doing that at the time? - who heard a classical piece and shifted gears.
"I think the combination of all those elements, in the United States, has left the instrument in a very male world. It's nice to have changed that."
- John Fleming can be reached at 727 893-8716 or fleming@sptimes.com
PREVIEW
Guitarist Sharon Isbin is the soloist in Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez with the Florida Orchestra, Susan Haig conducting, next weekend. Also on the program are Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique and Gabriela Frank's Three Latin-American Dances. Performances at 8 p.m. Friday at Morsani Hall of the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center in Tampa, 8 p.m. Saturday at the Mahaffey Theater at Bayfront Center in St. Petersburg and 7:30 p.m. May 16 at Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater. $21 to $45. 813 286-2403 or toll-free 1-800-662-7286; www.floridaorchestra.org