Tenor Karim Sulayman and guitarist Sean Shibe delivered a captivating and joyful recital at London's Wigmore Hall, presenting their 'Broken Branches' programme that spanned cultures and centuries. The duo, who released a recording of the programme in 2023, performed with a spontaneity that belied their preparation, engaging the audience with a blend of lament, love songs, and humour.
A Microcosm of World Heritage
Sulayman and Shibe brought together a diverse array of musical traditions, including English, Japanese, Scottish, Lebanese, and American influences. The programme's title, 'Broken Branches', is drawn from a poem by Sinan Antoon about an Iraqi refugee in New York, set to music by Layale Chaker in 2022. This piece concluded a sequence that began with 'Li Beirut', a powerful lament for the Lebanese capital. Despite these weighty themes, the performance leaned towards joy, as noted by the reviewers.
Spontaneous Dialogues and Evocative Pairings
The duo performed seated side by side, fostering an equal musical partnership. Sulayman's role as a balladeer was evident as they opened with Purcell's 'Music for a While', which seamlessly merged into works by Dowland. A trio of Italian Renaissance madrigals featured a melancholic Monteverdi piece, where Sulayman's sustained high notes evoked Italian opera from three centuries later. In Monteverdi's 'La Mia Turca', Sulayman humorously boo-hooed down melodic lines, making the rejected suitor the butt of the joke. A quiet Sephardic love song transitioned into an Arab-Andalusian guitar piece, leading to the gleeful Egyptian number 'El Helwa Di', with Sulayman whooping into falsetto. Only Britten's 'Songs from the Chinese', setting ancient words translated by a 1920s western poet, felt self-conscious, perhaps due to Britten's outsider perspective.
Striking Solos and Silent Thrall
Among Shibe's solos, the most striking was Jonathan Harvey's 1997 'Sufi Dance' – a beguiling, half-remembered impression where the guitar's top string was retuned to mimic an unfamiliar instrument. Sulayman proved a storyteller in multiple languages – English, Italian, Arabic, and Spanish – ending with a wistful Mexican encore. Together, they held long, pindrop silences, holding the audience in thrall.
