Julian Bliss & Carducci String Quartet - David Bruce: Gumboots; Johannes Brahms: Clarinet Quintet (2016)

On this album by clarinetist Julian Bliss, the titular work refers to gumboot dancing, South African miners' dances that during the apartheid era conveyed coded meanings as well as joy in the face of enormous hardship. A look at YouTube will reveal plenty of examples of a form that has been little known outside South Africa. Composer David Bruce's clarinet quintet falls into two parts, an untitled slow "Part One" (track 1) that presumably sets the dark scene of the mine, followed by a second part consisting of five dances. These are only lightly stamped by South African rhythms, and one wonders whether the work might have just as easily had a different title. But there is something joyous about them. Sample "Dance III" (track 4), with Bliss doing a lusty Gershwin slide at the beginning. Bliss trades off adeptly between bass and standard clarinets in the work. The Brahms Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115, may seem an odd pairing beyond the commonality of ensemble, but Bliss and the Carducci String Quartet do what's required here: they deliver a punchy, rhythmically sharply profiled reading that fits with the Bruce work and the larger questions it raises. Fine studio sound from Signum is an added attraction for an album featuring a somewhat problematic but undoubtedly pleasing contemporary work. -- James Manheim