Lyle Sheffler’s Recital at Manny’s

Cover page of the original source of the earliest selection in Sheffler’s recital (from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

Yesterday evening the Manny’s Musical Sundays concert series presented a solo recital by guitarist Lyle Sheffler live-streamed through Facebook Live. Over the course of 90 minutes, the program provided a wide diversity of plucked-string selections, going back as far as a fantasia in the Tres libros de musica en cifras para vihuela (three books of music in numbers [tablature] for vihuela) by Alonso Mudarra, published in 1546, up to “Farewell to Stromness” from The Yellow Cake Revue, composed by Peter Maxwell Davies in 1980 to protest plans to mine uranium ore on the island of Orkney in Scotland. (Davies originally wrote this for piano, but this was not the first time I encountered the guitar transcription.) Sheffler divided his program into three sets separated by brief breaks.

Sheffler talked a bit about having given several recitals, as well as music lessons, in cyberspace since the onset of shelter-in-place. However, this particular performance was his debut in the performing area that is part of the layout of Manny’s, which also includes a restaurant and a political bookshop. One could tell that he is still awkward when it comes to engaging an audience that he cannot see. Audio seems to have been provided by a single microphone, whose gain level was a bit too low, not only for Sheffler’s spoken introductions but also for some of the more subtle passages in the selections he chose to play. There were also a few lapses in his remembering to name the composer while introducing the title of the music.

For all these minor shortcomings, however, this was still an evening of pleasantly engaging listening. Many of the selections could be traced back to the programs and recordings presented by Andrés Segovia, but that should not surprise anyone familiar with the repertoire for guitar recitals. Personally, I was most delighted by Sheffler’s second (and final) encore selection, the “Fantasia X” from Mudarra’s publication. While this is a thoroughly engaging account of what may have originated through improvisation, it also incorporates at least one “riff” that sounds more at home in the rock repertoire of the second half of the twentieth century. I used to obsess over this piece in my graduate student days, making this performance an encounter with an old (but not forgotten) friend.