News and Reviews

Review: sinfonia ViVA and Julian Bliss
Djanogly Recital Hall, Nottingham, 27th Sept 2007

sinfonia ViVA has a happy knack of coming up with some refreshingly inventive programming, and this one was particularly attractive. The Copland first half began with Appalachian Spring in the original thirteen-instrument scoring (though not the full-length version, which I hope they'll give us sometime). With Principal Guest Conductor Nicholas Kok at the helm, the players balanced the meditative and the folksy to excellent effect, with the hoe-down-like dance music incisive and buoyant.

Julian Bliss joined the orchestra for Copland's Clarinet Concerto, projecting both the wistfulness of the opening and the punchy rhythms of the second movement. One questionable interpretative decision: by swinging the rhythm of the 'slap bass' theme right from its first appearance, he removed the contrast with those places where Copland specifically asks for it. The final section had tremendous driving energy and the clarinet's final three-octave smear was as exuberant as you could want. Even a break caused by a momentary power failure couldn't derail the performance's overall impetus.

After the interval, Julian Bliss was joined by Nicholas Kok (piano), Dan Storer (bass) and Charlie Ashbey (drums) as he let his love of improvisation loose on three jazz standards, Cole Porter's "Let's Do It", Jerome Kern's "Can't help loving that man", and Richard Rodgers' "The Lady is a Tramp". The results were enjoyable, even though there was a slight feeling of 'best behaviour' about them, without that last ounce of risk-taking that full-time jazz musicians instinctively bring to this material.

Finally, Julian Bliss and Nicholas Kok were the soloists in the first performance of Kok's own "7th degree", a jazz-inflected piece written with Bliss's playing in mind, and with improvised passages for both clarinet and piano. Scored for strings, piano and drums, it played with our expectations by switching back and forth between gentle lyricism and punchy vigour. A snatch of the hymn tune "Gonfalon Royal" even popped up at one point (no doubt an echo of Kok's early days as an organ scholar), arriving without warning and leaving without explanation. Typical of the music's processes was the way a strange, haunting bitonal episode for two violas morphed into a relaxed jazz waltz. A very effective piece which I trust we haven't heard the last of.

Review by Mike Wheeler

Conductor Nicholas Kok's new piece "7th Degree" provided the finale to last night's exhilarating collaboration between the chamber orchestra and Julian Bliss, a young clarinettist of mercurial talents.

Together with drummer Charlie Ashbey and Kok at the piano, Bliss improvised with stamina and imagination on material presented by the Orchestra. It was the wackiest meeting of classical and modern popular idioms since Keith Tippett played at Lakeside.

More overtly jazzy in tone were swinging instrumental renditions of Cole Porter, Jerome Kern and Richard Rodgers, served up by the solo trio and bassist Dan Storer.

Earlier, ViVA and Bliss united classical and popular strains in Copland's Clarinet Concerto, completed in 1948 for jazz maestro Benny Goodman. There was a short pause when the stage lighting failed. It took nothing away from the joys of a tight and expressive performance all round.

The evening began with Copland's dance score Appalachian Spring. The hall was ideal for projecting the sounds of the original music for 13 instruments – including a cracking episode that's missing from the later concert suite.

Review by Peter Palmer