It’s been a pretty demanding year for classical guitarist Sharon Isbin: three recordings; a tour of India; concerts and festivals in South America; and a rigorous tour schedule at home juggling a wide range of repertoire.
Her professional year officially ends this weekend when she joins the Tucson Symphony Orchestra for the first time since 2000 to perform John Corigliano’s “Troubadours,” a concerto for guitar and orchestra written for her.
“It’s extremely popular and I’ve performed it with many orchestras,” she said during a phone call last week that came less than a day after she returned to New York from a week in Hong Kong. “I’m thrilled to bring it to Tucson.”
The Grammy-winning guitarist inspired Corigliano to write the concerto based on the 13th century French troubadour era.
The idea, she explained, was for the solo guitar to act as the troubadour returning from ancient times.
Of course Corigliano, the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer of “The Red Violin,” took it a few steps beyond that simple idea.
Corigliano, in researching the history of troubadours, came upon “A chantar,” a song composed by the 13th century female troubadour La Comtessa Beatritz del Dia.
Specifically, he was intrigued by a single verse that he quoted around a set of free form variations, Isbin explained.
“You have everything from an off-stage dance band with wonderful rhythmic and evocative instruments and the guitar begins to emerge. ... Then I play this fast, long run. I would say the fastest run in the history of classical guitar,” Isbin, founder of the guitar department at Juilliard, said of the passage that goes on for a few minutes.
“In my interpretation, it’s like a time machine and it is taking us into this whirl of space back to the 13th century. And then emerges this beautiful theme from the troubadour’s song and it’s in a major key. When it comes back at the end, it’s in a minor key.”
Corigliano composed “Troubadours” for Isbin in 1993 and, a few years later, they recorded it on her 2002 album “American Landscapes.”
The change from major to minor key emphasizes the rise and fall of the troubadours in 13th century France.
Initially they were celebrated, but when France was thrown into civil war and strife, the troubadours fell out of fashion.
Many were persecuted or murdered, and even more were forced to flee.
“So the troubadour comes back with this bittersweet quality at the end and then the guitar fades off into the horizons with these chords,” Isbin said. “It ends with this sense of closure in another time zone.”
Isbin said she has performed the piece more than 80 times to positive response from audiences and critics alike.
TSO Music Director José Luis Gomez sandwiched the Corigliano between Wagner’s Prelude and Liebestod from “Tristan and Isolde” and Rachmaninoff’s tour de force “Symphonic Dances.”
Case Scaglione, a former New York Philharmonic assistant conductor, will be at the podium for the concert.
