ProStudioMasters.com

"Here's a double delight. First, an engaging new work that deserves a place in the chamber repertory; second, a passionate account of Brahms's Clarinet Quintet which can hold its head high against starrier competition." - Gramophone "Bruce has produced a very accessible 20 minute piece ... often exhilarating dances. If not exactly easy listening, this is nevertheless a piece to which you will want to return, which is not always the case with contemporary music." - Classic FM "After a long opening movement of heat haze, come five increasingly complex dances, reverberating with the smack of wood and bow on string and with the wheeling, almost klezmer-like playing of Julian Bliss, who flits seamlessly between regular and bass clarinet. The joyous rhythmic barrage of the finale could almost be out of a Falla ballet ... (on the Clarinet Quintet) Bliss and the Carducci Quartet offer a worthwhile, well-balanced performance with especial spark in the third movement." - The Guardian Julian Bliss and the Carducci Quartet pair two highly contrasting works on this 2016 release: Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet and David Bruce’s Gumboots for bass clarinet and string quartet. Bruce says the piece was inspired by the brutal labour conditions in South Africa under apartheid, in which black miners where chained together and wore gumboots (Wellington boots) while they worked in the flooded gold mines, because it was cheaper for the owners to supply the boots than to drain the floodwater from the mines. Forbidden from talking to each other, the workers slapped the boots and chains together as a form of communication, which later developed into a form of dance. "... (gumboot dancing) is characterized by a huge vitality and zest for life. So this for me is a striking example of how something beautiful and life-enhancing can come out of something far more negative." - David Bruce